Word Thief

Ode to Cell Phone

2012-01-30T14:01:00.002-05:00

I read this Facebook post called "Without my cell phone", and it got me thinking about how dependent I am on mine. Like even more dependent than that list suggests.
How dependent, you ask?
Basically, without my cell phone I would not be able to:

- see in the dark
- tell if there's food stuck between my teeth
- navigate on trips
- work the NYC subway system
- listen to music wherever I go
- check my email every 0.2 seconds
- find good restaurants in whatever neighborhood I happen to be in
- locate happy hour deals
- play Solitaire obsessively
- play Backgammon almost as obsessively
- tell time
- remember appointments
- remember what I need to buy at the grocery store
- figure out how much to tip
- contact anyone except for my parents, because theirs are the only phone numbers I still have memorized
- take pictures of my random daily life
- wake up in the morning
- meet up with people (cause who plans ahead anymore? we just go "text me when you get there")
- tell what the weather is like before I get dressed
- google things to win arguments with my friends
- show strangers videos of my cats

... okay, maybe the world would be better off if I couldn't do that last one. But still! It's kind of surreal to think back to the beginning of high school, when I didn't own a cell, yet somehow still managed to take the train into downtown Pittsburgh, meet up with friends, go out to eat, and not undertip. How did I do these things. Also, how did I remember any chores I was supposed to accomplish without alarms going off in my ear?
And, while we're on the topic, how come so few YA novels mention cell phones used for anything but texting or calling? I hardly ever actually call people, first of all, and second of all... There are so many other handy things phones can do! Next time your character is stuck in a dark cave with minimal reception... Cell phone light and googling how to pick locks for the win.

How the Internet Works

2012-01-27T04:14:00.001-05:00

Disclaimer: I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, cause you all are smart peoples. But this is one of those irresistible rant-type topics! So...

I avoided reading any posts about the whole Reviewers vs. Authors debacle until now. I did not want to get embroiled in that hot mess. I wasn't going to read it at all, but then I found a pretty chill, sensible post about it, and what can I say? Curiosity killed the cat.

I read some of the threads -- authors bitching at reviewers, reviewers bitching at authors, name-calling, attempts at rigging the system, etc. Now, I review a few books on Goodreads, and yes, I've reviewed a couple bad ones, but there's almost always something positive to say along with the negatives. What can I say? After 4 years of peer-reviewing in college, I think of books in crit-group terms.

But I don't consider myself a reviewer. And I'm not an author yet. So I'm speaking here to the author side of things, because someday I hope to count myself among their ranks.

Apparently some authors need to learn how the internet works.

Allow me to explain:

At first glance, it seems anonymous. You are hidden behind this big shiny screen. Nobody can see you. No uncomfortable eye contact, no holding a drink in your hand to disguise the fact that your dance moves look less coordinated than a giraffe in a tango class. Oh wait, that's prom.

Anyway! It feels private.

Newsflash? IT ISN'T.

Everything that you type on here stays on the record somewhere. Your 10 year old PhotoBucket pictures from when you were an angsty teen with a bowl cut and owl glasses? Yeah, get famous enough and someone will dig those up.

That blog post you wrote 3 years ago jokingly insulting the author you never thought you'd meet but who is now your agent's client as well? Will resurface.

That Twitter comment you made after too many glasses of wine bitching about your job? Your boss will find that too.

THAT IS HOW THE INTERNET WORKS.

Something else to remember? Those hurtful words on the screen, written by that total jackass peace4luv, who is not peaceful or loving and who cannot even be bothered to spell out l-o-v-e?

They're not just appearing there magically. There's a person behind them. A living, breathing human being. Who knows? Maybe it's a 13-year-old kid, just setting foot into the world for the first time, unfortunately before the prepubescent annoying phase has worn off. YOU CAN'T BE SURE.

So even if they're insulting you, even if "they started it, Mommy," and their reviews make you grind your teeth and scream and throw shit at walls... What the hell is attacking them back going to solve?

Will it improve their opinion of you or your book? No.

Will it intimidate them into taking down their review? No.

Will it make other readers who are checking out their review more likely to read your book in spite of the bad recommendation? No.

Will it alienate potential readership and lead to abject humiliation for you? Yes.

Will it hurt the person who attacked you? Maybe.

Will it make you feel better to hurt them, especially if you later learn that they are a 13-year-old kid, or a volunteer firefighter who spends 18 hours a day saving lives and the other 3 hours reading books late at night, who just happens to have been really irritated or sleepy when they posted their inflammatory review of your book? I hope not.

Now back to my first point. Remember how nothing on the internet is ever truly deleted? Congratulations, now your embarrassing angry rant at this anonymous online reviewer about whom you know nothing, will remain plastered on your permanent record for the rest of your life.

Bad reviews suck. They hurt. Maybe they're unjust and maybe the reviewer really is a complete jackass who deserves a karmic kick in the pants. But the solution is never to retaliate. The solution is to buy a giant bottle of vodka, build a dartboard with their reviews taped to it, and invite your REAL LIFE friends over to enjoy a drunken bitchfest (although, in retrospect, darts + too much booze might be a bad idea too, hmm...).

Because that's the great thing about the internet. It has an off switch. So when it's pissing you off, shut down and go out into the real world. At least when you complain there, nobody is recording every word you say.*

* Unless you are on a reality TV show, in which case, don't do this either.**

** Also, if someone is following you around recording everything you say, and you aren't on a reality show, then FYI, Big Brother is happening. WARN EVERYONE!!!

Genre vs. Literary

2012-01-25T09:30:00.003-05:00

To everyone who thumbs their nose at "genre" fiction, and insists that only "literary" fiction has true merit, I say...

What were these books considered when they first published?

Literary or Romantic Satire?

Literary or Fantasy?

Literary or Dystopian?

Literary or Mystery?

Literary or Science Fiction?

Literary or Young Adult?

Literary or just Weird and Pretty Much Tanked His Sinking Career?

Next time you judge a book by its genre, just remember: current perception is fleeting. Brilliant writing lasts forever.

Playing Dirty (WIN STUFF)

2012-01-23T11:20:00.002-05:00

Because all is fair in love, war, and MMORPGs.

Basically, here's the deal. First of all, you all know I am a nerd, right?

Ok, now that we've established that... I play this online game called Path of the Vampire.* Stop, don't run away! I promised you could win stuff remember?

This game is an RP. What's that, you say? Oh, you young people who don't play games made pre-WoW! Basically, there's a grid you move around on, and then a forum where you write stories about what you do on the grid (or other stuff, like how badass your vamp/human/whatever is). Etc.

Right now, I'm in a contest for this game to get the most reviews on a story (based in the game world) that I wrote over on FictionPress. It's called A Monster Ate My Prom Date.**

Sooo here's the deal. IF you have a FictionPress account (doesn't matter if it's ancient/heretofore inactive, just has to be an account created initially before this January), and if you post a review on my story here (no need to read the whole thing, and reviews can be good or bad. So "cool" or "lame" or "STOP WRITING AND GO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE" would all work), and then you leave a comment here telling me your FP name to go see that lovely review... You will get...

A FREE BOOK FROM ME!

What are the options, you ask? GOOD QUESTION.

In my to-give-away pile right now, I have:

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Fracture by Megan Miranda

Steampunk! An Anthology (featuring stories by Garth Nix, Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare and more!)

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

And many more that are currently sitting on my basement shelf! But I'm upstairs so I'm too lazy to go check right now... But still! PRIZES!!!

What if you don't have a FictionPress account, you ask with sadfaces? NEVER FEAR. Leave a comment anyway, and let me know which book you're interested in, or how sick to death you are of vampires or whatever, and I'll drop your name in the Steampunk Hat of Win for a chance at winning any of the books left over.***

YAY. CONTESTS. GO FORTH AND FROLICK. ETC.

P.S. - This contest will end on the same day my FP contest ends, so January 31st. ENTER BEFORE THEN!!

* This was pre-Twilight, STOP JUDGING ME. ok, technically THIS game wasn't pre-Twilight, but the game I used to play before this one, from which this superior game spun off, was. pre-Twilight, that is. WHATEVER. evil vampires are still cool. sorta. anyway...

** You're still judging me, aren't you? *EYES SUSPICIOUSLY*

*** Which, lets face it, will probably be a lot. Oh FictionPress, you died like 5 years ago, didn't you?

Book Marketing Reference Page

2012-01-20T09:40:00.000-05:00

Those of you who write nonfiction, or who have ever published something with Wiley, have probably heard of the Wiley Author's Guide to Marketing and Publicity. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a giant PDF jam-packed with great ideas on how to promote your book before and after it publishes.

Most of the ideas are geared toward nonfiction writers, but I've seen fiction-writing friends receive copies from their agents too, just because the suggestions in it are so useful.

Well, good news! It's now available online. Here! In a super easy-to-follow format!

Even if you aren't published, there are some great "before publication" tips that I'd advise taking a look at. And the social networks section offers easy get-started tips, for those of you new to the blogosphere/Twitterverse/etc.

Fun with Scissors

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

I blame my dear crit-partner Corrie for this one. Last Friday she wrote about a vlog series on youtube she found by Cara (aka cutewitch772). In the videos, Cara gives tips on reconstructing old T-shirts: everything from simple ideas like cutting to make them off-the-shoulder, to more advanced tricks like laddering/weaving.

The best part? No sewing required! Just scissors and a creative vision. So this weekend, while my roomie and I were holed up inside away from the cold, shivering and ordering delivery pizza and watching Labyrinth and the Nightmare Before Christmas for the hundredth times... We decided to get creative.

I started out easy, just trying an off-the-shoulder look (this is take 2, because I cut waaay too far down take 1, and pretty much destroyed the shirt >.<):

But then I wanted to get extra creative. Laddering is so much fun! Even when you have no idea what you're doing, like me!

So add another "new thing" tried to my New Year's Resolution list: T-shirt augmenting. Other new things I've tried so far this month? Regular gym membership (egads, my thighs. And my triceps. *pets them*), going to a bar alone to root on my team (and getting called "Pittsburgh" by strangers all night cause of my Lemieux jersey), visiting crit-partner's restaurant in Brooklyn (which I definitely should've done sooner... :D), and saw an off-broadway show (Rent! which I saw on broadway years ago, but I hadn't been in ages, so it was fun).

What about you guys? Anyone else tried anything new/fun/adventurous so far this 2012? If not, I recommend the T-shirt thing... :)

Inspirational Teens

2012-01-14T17:31:00.001-05:00

Sorry to post two videos in a row, but when I saw this one, I couldn't resist. The whole time I watched this video, I kept thinking, this girl's story would make an AWESOME YA novel... And then at the end, you find out she's working on a novel! So hope she finishes it. I'd read that!!

The Joy of Books

2012-01-12T14:47:00.002-05:00

Yes, I know, Janet Reid already shared this one, and everyone here reads her blog daily (or if you don't, YOU SHOULD!), but I couldn't resist a re-post. This video is adorable. And seriously impressive when you think about how long it must've taken to film this in stop-motion...

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-05T14:33:00.003-05:00

It's that time of year again (for those of us who follow this particular calendar anyway?). Time to start ~~writing the wrong year on all of your checks~~ reinventing yourself! Or at least your life at present. Cause we all have little changes we'd like to make (such as become ripped in manner of Kyra Gracie) or reasonable goals to attain (such as becoming a NY Times bestselling author and living out rest of days in Parisian cafe sipping wine and writing an epic fantasy of a Martinesque* scale that no editor will dare to reject because we ~~are so awesome~~ make them so many buckets of money).

Reasonable, attainable goals, right?

Ahem. But seriously, there's something hyper-motivating about seeing all the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed ~~bastards~~ ~~overachievers~~ driven people making resolutions to be harder/better/faster/stronger. It makes you want to leap off the cliff of insanity right along with them, like the fabled lemming, only more hopeful!

Honestly, I don't even remember what I resolved last year. "Improve," maybe? Or "evolve into superior life-form?"

No matter! THIS year is a new year. THIS year, we will possibly all die a fiery death. So it seems like a good year to make changes (you know, while still alive and such).

Okay, I did make a joking ~~notreally~~ resolution to win a bunch of money this year. But besides that! I decided to actually take a look at my goals for 2012:

1. Find an agent.
This one is partially out of my control. But I currently have 2 queryable** manuscripts and another one on the way whose premise I'm really excited about. So in practice, this resolution boils down to: Send at least 1 query letter per weekday. No matter how many months this needs to continue for.

2. Finish next novel.
I'm about 35 pages into draft one right now, but like I said, I'm really excited about the premise for this one. And it's contemporary YA. No spaceships or dragons or explosions (though I'd still class it as a thriller). WEIRD FOR ME. So we'll see how that goes. I'm optimistic I can get a first draft knocked out before vacation in March, and finish serious edits by the summer, all going well.

3. Join a gym.
Yes, this is a total cliche, I know. But DO YOU KNOW how much gyms cost around NYC? ARHGHGH. Why do I need to pay to be healthy? Shouldn't I have to pay to be lazy instead? That seems more appropriate... Anyway! I will finally pick a gym and suck it up and pay the insane joining fees this year. I swear. And then I'll find someone to teach me Brazilian jiu-jitsu and I'll get all buff like...

... wait, straying into impractical again!

4. Try new things.
Yeah, that's really general. But that's because there are so many new things I want to try this year. Like zumba (why do I seek out ways to embarrass myself? We may never know!). And that Brazilian restaurant on the Upper East Side where waiters just walk around with slabs of meat and shave off slices onto your plate whenever you give them the green flag (literally). And kickboxing and the industrial club over by Alphabet City that I keep hearing about and going to Italy and riding a gondola in Venice and being like "EFFYEAHIAMDARRYL" except not out loud because it is nerdy to talk about your book characters that way!

... So yeah, I just lumped all that into one category there. Seemed easier.

Oh, and one more resolution: post a new book giveaway soon! Preferably this week!

So what about yinz guys***? Making any resolutions this year?

* if this is not a word, it should be...

** I am on a roll with the word-inventing here

*** HA. fooled you. I did NOT make that one up! ... I just spent too much time in Pittsburgh this winter break...

My Film Debut

2011-12-30T22:47:00.003-05:00

I know, I know. No posts in a week! But it's the holidays, everyone is too drunk/inundated with relatives/food-coma-ed* to post. So I feel I'm in good company!

Anyway, way back in August of 2009, I posted about my introduction to stardom: aka, being an extra on a movie set. In this case, the movie was Warrior, which finally released earlier this fall.

Not gonna lie, I was out of the country in Calgary when it debuted, and by the time I got back to NYC, I was too lazy to go and check it out in theaters. I figured there'd be a couple passing images of me and my brother with the neon signs we created jumping up and down in the background during cuts between a fight scene. Woo.

Today, after a few months of being lazy, we figured we'd pick up a copy on DVD and check it out. The movie itself is... well... you know, like all of those fighting movies. Good Guy is Totally Broke and Screwed if he doesn't fight. The Wimpy Wife begs him not to fight cause he'll get hurt. The Reluctant Coach tells him he is Not Good Enough. His estranged dad and bro are also going to join in the Big Melee Fight that Anyone Could Win!! etc. You all know how this ends, I don't even need to spoil you.

But! In the second group of fights (it's supposed to be a 2-day 16-person tournament, so you have to win 4 fights to take home the prize), there's a much more entertaining cut scene! For me anyway. The Good Guy is a Physics teacher, so his students all get together at the local drive-in to cheer him on (because for some reason this drive-in can broadcast live UFC fights? DON'T QUESTION IT!). Those students include yours truly!

As the scene progressed, my brother and I paused and craned our necks at the TV. "Look, you can see our signs in the corner there! And look there's us in the background cheering behind the main cast!"

And then suddenly the scene cut, and we both said "Oh."

So yeah, I probably should've bothered to see this in theater. Whoops! But still awesome. We're in a movie!!! And you can actually see us!! And I look totally weird screaming like that, but at least I did not break character and laugh like Kevin. Clearly I am a superior actooor (cue snooty French accent). Har. Notreally.

This was a fun way to round out 2011 though. Here's to a New Year with more cool new experiences like this one!

* That is a word. Cause I say so.

Happy Winter Solstice!

2011-12-21T11:18:00.000-05:00

Or whichever wintery holiday you celebrate... Hope your Yuletide carolings all go splendidly! I am battling my way through JFK International Airport right now, but when I return, I shall be giving away PRESENTS!

Mainly, lots of ARCs of books that have now published... And some of which have coffee stains... But you don't mind, do you?! Of course not!

Want a sneak peek of the gift-giving to come? Of course you do!

Fracture by Megan Miranda

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stayed up until 4:30 am to finish this one. LOVED IT. I was afraid at first that it might turn into the cliche love-triangle deal, but then it wasn't. At all. So if you get worried around page 50 as well, never fear! It stays just as awesome as the beginning.
By turns thought-provoking, emotional and creepy, this book keeps you on your toes. The romance is sweet, believable, and never makes you cringe. The MC Delaney is likeable, even when she's having her emotional/mental breakdown. All the emotions just felt very realistic in this novel -- from the parents to the best-friend-next-door, to Delaney's whole group of friends, to Troy. You understood them all, even the ones you didn't necessarily agree with or like.
I would've liked a little more build-up to the climax; it seemed to come out of left field at the end there. But it was a satisfying ending, with great symmetry, so I think it worked anyway.
DEFINITELY give this one a read when it comes out this winter!

View all my reviews

Search Keywords: WTF Mate?

2011-12-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

Has anyone else ever looked at the keywords that lead people to your blog the most often? Mine are always a little off-the-wall, but this week was the best yet...

Apparently these are the best terms to google to find my blog:

hahahaha what.

You Are Not Prepared

2011-12-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Fair warning, this is going to sound like a downer at first. But stick with me! I have a point!

This is for all you first time novelists out there. Raise your hands! Yes, you of the smooth baby cheeks and the bright happy smiles! Give a shout! We love you guys, with your enthusiasm and your checklists and your preparedness!

Oh yes, this is not about people who haven't researched the business yet. This is about those of you whose metaphorical writing bathrooms look like this:

You are READY. You know who to query, how to query, how to reply to queries. You know that you'll get a lot of rejection letters, both form and not. You know that after you get requests for your manuscript, you'll get still more rejections before you find the right agent. You know you have to just keep querying and querying and querying until you find the right person, place and time.

Except, I hate to break it to you, but: You are not prepared.

No amount of mental visualization and stocking of metaphorical toilet paper can prepare you for the mess ahead. Maybe you'll be fine at first. Maybe for the first year, the rejection letters will roll of your shoulders like water off a duck.* Or maybe you'll be one of the lucky few who finds an agent right away! Maybe you'll even get a book deal easily too. I'm not saying it's impossible to succeed.

I'm just saying that eventually, whether it's now or somewhere further down your journey toward publication/regular authordom... It's going to get to you. The rejections and the "No"s and the feeling like you aren't good enough, or the shitty reviews on Amazon, or the rude letters from people who disagreed with a point you made. Eventually, some day, sooner or later (and for your sake I hope it's later), you are going to be broadsided.

Geez, you're saying. What is the point of telling us this, if we cannot prepare?!

Well, partly it's because I love prepared memes.

But MOSTLY it's because... When the time comes that your total unpreparedness hits you... Remember: You are not alone. We've all been there.** It's okay to be unprepared. It's okay to have off days and to screw up and to doubt yourself. You're human!***

And at the end of the day, after you've had your breakdown and dramatically torn your clothes in mourning and printed out your latest magnum opus in order to symbolically burn it on the pyre of suck, you will pick yourself up, and dust yourself off, and get ready for the War of Creative Life all over again. Because on the scale of writerly badassitude, this is you:

* What? That is a thing! Ducks are very water-resistant. Stop judging me.

** Or if we haven't, we'll join you shortly.

*** We hope. Unless you are an alien. Then, I dunno... You might be on your own! But at least Kanye will still think you're hawt.

My Cat Plays Hockey

2011-12-14T09:32:00.000-05:00

Boggart supports the Penguins in their effort to whoop some NJ Devil butt:

Teehee.

Too Blunt

2011-12-12T09:17:00.001-05:00

I have a shameful confession to make. I kind of sort of like that one Katy Perry song, E.T. It's catchy, and the music is a little creepy, but in an attractive way. The story it tells is different, too. No vampires/fallen angels here! She's falling in love with a straight-up alien. What.

This is one of those situations, like in fiction, where you have to make me believe in this weird situation. Because when I think alien, I think this:

Um, NO THANK YOU, I do not want to make out, Mr. Xenomorph.

But Ms. Perry's song, like a good novel that makes you think that, oh I don't know, werewolves would make sexy boyfriends, convinces you that she really does like this alien dude. And we understand from the lyrics (Infect me with your love and Fill me with your poison) that she wants to get... well, up close and personal with him.

But then I heard the remix version with Kanye West.

No offense Mr. West. I'm sure you have done great songs yourself. But you just killed this one for me, with two lyrics:

"Alien sex."

When I first heard this version, and it got to that line, I could not stop hysterically laughing. I am smirking right now actually.*

The theme of the song did not change. We knew all along that Ms. Perry wanted to bang E.T.** But since the song was subtle enough, it worked. Alien sex just takes it to whole new level of laughably-blunt. Which is not good unless you're singing/writing a parody.

So yeah. Be careful with bluntness. Sometimes it's called for, and sometimes it works. Other times it kills everything you managed to accomplish in the story...

* It only gets worse from there. Some more lyrics? "I want to strobe you, then imma probe you." *DIES* hahahaha.

**
(I'm sorry, little guy)

Dear Gmail, Quit Embarrassing Me

2011-12-09T09:55:00.003-05:00

Not sure if any of the rest of you have these kinds of problems with Gmail, but I've had a few that could've turned into serious faux pas if I hadn't caught them. So I thought I'd share what to be on the look-out for, especially as you're querying! Because every time one of these attacks I want to scream and stab Google to tiny pieces.*

LinkedIn Add Requests. This is the biggest problem for me. My LinkedIn account is attached to my Gmail, so whenever I log in, it imports all of my Gmail contacts and constantly tries to force me to "add all" of them to my LinkedIn profile. This would be fine, I suppose, under normal circumstances, but it's a problem for me. Because 75% of my Gmail contact list is comprised of agents and editors I have queried.

LinkedIn is a business site. Used for business contacts. Generally business contacts you actually already know. Sure, I'll add other writers, or maybe an editor or agent who I know personally from conferences or as a former classmate. But literally every time I log in I have to be careful, because it makes it far too easy to accidentally send add requests to everyone you've ever queried (and I am relatively sure that essentially friend-requesting a spamlist full of agents who rejected you is NOT A GOOD THING).

Consider Including. Dude. I do not know who wrote the programming on this one but FOR SHAME.

Basically, in case you don't have Gmail, it's a little button that appears underneath your To: window, with suggestions of who else to add to your email. Because clearly nobody ever emails just one person anymore.

Sometimes it's spot-on. Everyone in my writer's group is intrinsically linked on there now (you emailed Ghenet? Email these other 5 people too!!). But other times, the thought of accidentally clicking that hyperlink and adding more people to my letter** makes me cringe in horror. Because now it likes to tell me to add people to the same email who I've sent similar messages to.

FOR EXAMPLE, "oh, you wrote an email with the subject "Query: Stray" to Agent A, B, C and D too! You should include them in your query to agent E."

AHHHH no. So um. If you are easily inclined to click too many things like I am, watch out for this one.

Color-Changing Font. I really have to wonder what genius thought this one up. Say you're copying and pasting something from a sent message (i.e. the body of your query letter) to paste into a new one. It looks fine when you paste it. You type the rest of your new query, and hit send.

Then you go into your sent box, only to find that Gmail has handily changed the font color from black to purple or green. GEE THAT IS SO USEFUL THANK YOU. Especially because we all know people love to read submissions in neon multicolored fonts.

Luckily if you select all and change the color to black (even though it already looks black) every time you do this, it will avoid the color-changing. But still. Annoying extra step for me to forget? No thanks.

Automatic Adding of Email Contacts to Chat List. Gmail also has this totally un-handy feature where it adds all of your email contacts to your Chat list on the left-hand side, as soon as you've emailed a person who has a Google account.

Granted, yes, you would need to mis-click to accidentally message, say, an agent. Or a real estate broker you talked to 5 months ago (I have done this one). But people have similar names! I have like 10 friends named Sarah. What happens when I query an agent named Sarah and then their name pops up from idle right as I'm about to message my friend Sarah and I click too fast? SRS PROBLEMS.

Thankfully, the chat window is hideable, and you can individually select contacts you do not want to display. Just FYI.

Yes, these are all avoidable issues. No, thankfully, I've not yet embarrassed myself with any of these (except that color-changing font one). But as I am a complete klutz/Technobane, I'm sure it is ONLY A MATTER OF TIME. So I thought I would share the tips.

* STOP TRYING TO INTEGRATE ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE, GOOGLE. I have a PERSONAL life and a WORK life and a WRITING life, and I would like to keep them all on their own separate planes of existence. Apparently no one in your marketing departments understands this. Grrrr.

** Okay, I realize the chances of this are slimmer than the chances of accidentally Linking-In people, BUT STILL. I am le clumsy with the mouse button. I want to lower my chances of accidental social embarrassment by as far as possible.

RTW: How far would you go to get published?

2011-12-07T17:05:00.004-05:00

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This Week's Topic is: How far would you go to get published?

Not gonna lie, when I first read this, I thought it meant like, how long will you keep trying until this happens? To which my answer is FOREVER DAMNIT I AM THE MOST STUBBORN PERSON ON THE PLANET with the possible exception of these people.

Just to give you some context, if I'm this competitive about other stuff:

You can bet that when it comes to publishing one of my books... Well, my true precioussssss is not a ring, we'll just say that.

But then I reread the post, and I realized that the question was really: How much are you willing to compromise?

Usually compromising has a negative connotation. I have friends who order me not to let anyone change a word of their favorite section in my novels, because that would be caving in, or letting the publisher take away my artistic freedom. And that's great, loveable, awesome feedback. But it's also wrong.

Almost any paragraph, scene, or character is cut-able if it's necessary. Even edits that I initially hate when I first hear the suggestion often turn out to be needed when I think about it some more. Sometimes I disagree with suggestions for revisions I've received from friends, beta readers, my critique group, or even agents. But usually even if I don't like their exact idea for a fix, the areas they mark do have problems that need to be addressed. 9 times out of 10, I've been able to find my own solution that solves the problem they noticed, but that sticks to my view of the story.

But I realize that working with a publisher will be different. They'll have paid for the novel. They might have suggestions I don't like that I need to incorporate anyway. And I'm fine with that, because in my experience, even the edits I don't like eventually do make the work as a whole stronger.

However, very very rarely, I come across some lines I will not cross. For example, I generally have diverse characters in my fiction. Most of my main characters are not white, or not heterosexual, or not able-bodied, or maybe not even all three. I have heard of some publishers (though hopefully none I would ever work with!) requesting changes to protagonists who they think "will not appeal to a wide enough audience."

That's the one suggestion that crosses the line for me. I'm willing to change attitudes, voices, secondary character involvement, scenes, even major plot points. But as much as I want to be published (and trust me, I want it SO BAD), I will not alter my characters to make them "more mainstream."

If you let people whitewash your stories, or straighten all gay characters*, the fictional world is never going to look as diverse as reality. We've come a long way with equal rights. We still have further to go. Art, literature, film -- that's where the changes in people's perceptions start. They start with you.

* Note: if I had a secondary, unneeded character who was gay, and the editor asked me to cut that person, I would. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about someone saying "this character needs to be straight because straight people don't want to read about gay relationships."

Books I Want to Defenestrate

2011-12-02T09:58:00.006-05:00

Usually when you think of books you complain about, stories you didn't like come to mind, right?

But last weekend, as I was inches from throwing my Kindle at a wall after reading the third book in Song of Ice and Fire (don't worry, no spoilers), I realized that sometimes the books I love the most are also the ones that make me the angriest. At the end of the Deathly Hallows, when everyone and their mom was dying, I wanted to throw Rowling off a bridge.* As I read The Time Traveler's Wife, I was gritting my teeth at the stupid $*&@$&@ing author for not giving her characters a better way out of their situation. In Imajica, every time we wound up somewhere totally different from where the characters wanted to go, I got sooo impatient.

But I love all of those books. I think they are fantastic. I think their authors are incredibly talented. So why do I want to throw the novels out the window and jump up and down on their covers?

Because the authors made me care about their characters. They made me love them, and root for them, and pray for them to come out on top as much as I would if they were real people I knew.** So when they fail at their goals, I empathize with them. When they suffer, I suffer too. When they want to rip out their hair and scream in frustration, so do I.

That is the mark of a brilliant novel. Books that you're emotionally invested in have the biggest impact on you as a reader (or they do on me, anyway). Those are the stories that you find yourself still thinking about months after you finish, the stories that stick with you, the stories that birth hundreds of fanfic spinoffs, because no one else wants to leave those characters behind either.

So, as I brave my way into the depths of A Feast for Crows, book four in this series, I have to say... hats off, Martin. And if you kill any more of my favorites, I swear I will hunt you down. *cough*

* seriously, if I ever meet her in person, it would go something like this "OMFG I love you and everything you have ever written but WHYYYYYY LUPIN, HAVE YOU NO SOUL!??!?!"

** and in the case of George R.R. Martin's books, sweat bullets every time those characters get into a fight, since he's proved time and time again that No One Is Safe. During one duel after the midpoint of the third novel, I was literally having heart palpitations. YesIamthatsad.

Best Writing Resources

2011-11-30T13:38:00.001-05:00

This is half for my own reference... But I have a ton of writing resources I use all the time, so I thought I'd share, and see if any of you have some favorite resources of your own to recommend! Let me know, and I can add to the list.

Outlining:

The Snowflake Method - Explains how to build an outline from the inciting idea, up. Useful for: assuaging the look of terror upon your face as you stare at your blank word document and wonder how the hell to start your new project.

LOCK System - Summary of the LOCK (Lead, Objective, Confrontation and Knockout) system of editing from Ghenet, paraphrased from James Scott Bell's speech at the 2011 Writer's Digest Conference. Useful for: figuring out the basic ingredients of your story. The main character, his/her goal, what stands in the way, and how it all goes down in the end.

Writing:

The Emotion Thesaurus - Gives you a page-long list of descriptions related to emotions like anger, grief or happiness. Useful for: those moments when you look back at your last 3 scenes and realize your character's reaction to EVERYTHING is to smile/grin/smirk.

Google Documents - Google's online document storage service. Useful for: Writing first drafts on multiple computers. Save yourself the hassle of carrying around a USB stick or constantly emailing yourself updated drafts. Just log into your Google account, write in the word document (which looks just like word and saves automatically as you type). No need to worry about backing up your story -- it's accessible from anywhere you are.

Scrivener - Writing software designed specifically for storytellers. Useful for: organizing scenes/chapters/sections in your initial draft, keeping track of which characters appear in what scenes, and my personal favorite, outlining the scenes on shift-able note cards for a birds-eye view of your novel. Also, full-screen mode is your friend.

Freedom - Internet-blocking software for Windows or Macs. Useful for: when you just can't resist the lure of checking your email, Facebook page, Twitter and blog all in quick succession, instead of writing your next chapter. Just tell the timer how long you want to write for (five minutes, an hour, two hours?) and bam. Self-control problem solved. You can no longer access the internet for that length of time.

Write or Die - Set yourself a word or time goal, and either reach it or suffer the consequences. Useful for: beating down that inner editor to power through your first draft. If you don't write fast enough (you set your own pace), the application punishes you by starting to delete what you've already written. So keep the words flowing! Worry about how good they actually are later.

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month (November). Useful for: whenever you need to know that thousands and thousands of other people around the world are suffering as they try to reach the same goal as you. Cheer each other on, have contests, swear to beat all the other writers in your region to the finish line... However you like to NaNo, this month is all about GETTING WORDS ON THE PAGE.

Editing:

Dan Wells on Story Structure (Parts 1-5) - Breaks down plot structure into its most basic 7 elements. Useful for: your first terrifying foray into editing that shiny novel you just finished. Also quite helpful for outlining.

Revision Spreadsheet - Guide to creating a scene spreadsheet to help editing. Useful for: getting down to the scene-by-scene nitty-gritty, so you can figure out exactly where your plot needs some electroshock therapy to keep the reader hooked from beginning to end.

Fluidity - My personal take on exactly why editing a novel is so hard, and how I think a plot outline should really look. Useful for: when you're trying to play connect-the-dots with elements that appeared in the first half of your story and vanished, or problems that don't crop up until Act III.

Plotting Along - Keli Gwyn explains her good old-fashioned pen-and-paper approach to honing in on her plot. Useful for: when you feel completely overwhelmed by the size of your novel, and you just wish you could shrink it to a single page in your head and stare at it until you figure out what's wrong.

Querying:

QueryShark - Agent Extraordinaire Janet Reid critiques queries that readers send in for her to publicly devour. Useful for: reading before you try to tackle the daunting task of summarizing your magnum opus in 300 words or less. It gives great examples of what NOT to do, and what a successful query looks like.

Query Letter Hell - sub-feature of the AbsoluteWrite forums, the query veterans of this den of squirrels are eager to rip apart all the problems in your poor excuse for a query... And help you put it back together again. Useful for: Revising drafts 1-40 of your query.

Agent Spotlight - Series of literary agent descriptions, including (but not limited to) interview links, Publisher's Marketplace descriptions, agency websites, blurbs on the agent's reading preferences, and a copy of their submission guidelines. Useful for: Narrowing in on the handful of agents who would be absolutely perfect to query with your middle grade space opera with dystopian elements.

QueryTracker - Free Database of Literary Agents. Useful for: keeping track of the 700 agents you just sent draft #41 of your query letter to. Trust me, you will forget who all you emailed, and searching your inbox to find out will quickly become the worst thing ever.

AgentQuery - Another free literary agent database. Useful for: Researching agents who might not appear on Query Tracker (note: this website does not have the same tracking functions as QT, however, so make sure to note who you query here in a word document/spreadsheet/chiseled slab of granite, or via whatever note-taking method you find most easy to reference).

When You Get the Offer - Hannah Moskowitz's guide to professionally landing your agent. Useful for: when that distant, unimaginable, dream-come-true day arrives and the fantastic agent you queried calls to offer to represent you... What do you do?!

Networking:

AbsoluteWrite Forums - Not only the home of Query Letter Hell, but also a haven for ambitious writers like you, where you can find like-minded people to kvetch about the publishing process with. Useful for: Getting advice from people who have been there, chatting with other writers in your age group/genre, meeting real live (well, online) authors who made it to the wonderful world of published-ness, finding beta readers, getting critiques on your first page/synopsis/query... The list just goes on and on!

SCBWI - The Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Useful for: anyone who writes in any genre from picture books up to young adult. Yes, the membership is paid. Best $70 a year I spend on my career. SCBWI critique group match found me my current writer's group. The New York SCBWI Winter Conference's agent panels are how I found the first 10 agents I queried, 9 of whom asked for partials because I attended the SCBWI conference and listened to them (and trust me, that first query was nothing spectacular). The NY conference is also how I met my beloved crit-partner-in-crime. And when she and I attended a local SCBWI mixer, we met and abducted the newest member of our writer's group, the lovely Ghenet. I cannot tell you how much help SCBWI has given me in getting started writing and connecting to other people doing the same thing. Plus, if you're a full-time writer, they have insurance programs, member benefits and all kinds of nifty stuff like that.

The Author's Guild - society for the published writer. Useful for: once your first book picks up, and you're wondering, WHAT THE HELL DO I DO NOW!? This society also offers insurance programs, member benefits, and the best part: advocacy on the part of authors. This is a powerful thing. When Harlequin tried to open a vanity press under the guise of pretending to give rejected writers a chance to still publish under their name (without mentioning that oh yeah, the writers need to PAY to be published, print their books, advertise for them, etc., etc.), the Romance Writers of America Guild made a huge statement by banning Harlequin from their annual conference and threatening to remove Harlequin-published authors from their guild, since the guild has a "no vanity publishers" clause. Harlequin admitted its issue pretty fast. Harlequin quickly yielded, changing the name of the vanity press to disassociate it from Harlequin's main umbrella corporation. It's good to have a guild at your back when sticky situations like that arise.

WriteOnCon - Free online writer's conference held every summer. Useful for: if you don't have the dough to attend a conference in person (or if you just want to attend every conference you can!). WriteOnCon offers all the benefits of a writer's conference -- talented speakers, agents scouring the attendees for potential clients, video presentations, interactive chats with agents and editors -- all without the cost of conference fees or travel expenses!

Miscellaneous Inspiration:

Elizabeth Gilbert on Creativity - Author of Eat, Pray, Love's (brilliant) TED Talk on the creative struggle. What is genius? Where does it come from? Who's to blame when we can't find inspiration? Useful for: when come down with a bad case of the dreaded writer's block. Or when you just want to procrastinate and listen to a really interesting speech.

Stories Save Lives - Shameless self promotion. But for real. A story saved my brother's life. Useful for: anytime you're wondering whether telling your story is worth all this pain. Trust me. It is.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

2011-11-24T11:59:00.003-05:00

... to all of you USians out there! Hope your turkeys/tofurkeys are delicious, and hope you get to spend time with family and friends today. Me, I'm off to down some cold meds! Woo! <3

Death of the Slow Start

2011-11-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I loaned my lovely crit-partner one of my favorite science fiction novels of all time: The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. This book is a combination of several of my favorite things: sci-fi futures, time travel, the middle ages, and scary diseases (okay, that last one's not actually a favorite thing, but it does make for some high-stakes fiction!).

I was glad to hear that my crit-partner was enjoying it too, but she had an interesting comment about it. She mentioned that she felt like if this book was being published now, rather than back in 1993, a lot of the slower sections would have been cut.

I've heard a few other people mention similar things lately. Some have postulated whether or not Jane Austen's novels would even be published nowadays, due to the slow beginnings that take a long time to build to the narrative. Others have argued that slow-builds are a luxury only permitted in literary fiction, not out in genre-land. In Dan Wells' videos on the 7-point plot system, he mentions something he calls the "Ice Monster prologue," named for the prologue to George R.R. Marten's Game of Thrones (where in some ice monsters stab a few people, before the story cuts to a slow beginning about a boy growing up in a cold northern castle). Wells suggests using something like this to hook readers if the rest of your beginning is going to be slow. On the other hand, I've also heard readers complain about unrelated prologues "tricking" you into thinking a book will be "exciting."

My question is not about the merits of using or not using the Ice Monster prologue. My question is... are slow starts allowed anymore?

I work in publishing. I live and breathe publishing news. I'm not trying to put the industry down. But I wonder if lately things haven't become, through no fault of anyone in particular, a little too formulaic.

Yes, people say that "good writing will get noticed no matter what." They say there are no rules as long as you tell the story well. But they also say "hook the reader right from the start" and "always keep the tension increasing" and "cut anything extraneous."

This is all good advice. Great advice. It has made my writing much better, and I've seen it work in a million YA novels. Everything from the Hunger Games to Heist Society to Anna and the French Kiss. But the slow builds that I have seen are mostly classic novels, older YA novels from the 90s or earlier, or the occasional adult literary novel. If I do find the rare YA novel with a slow-build, it is almost invariably from an author who's already hugely successful.*

Don't get me wrong, I love a quick-start. In medias res all the way, baby. But is that the only beginning we're allowed to have anymore? Do kids really not read books that start slow anymore? Or have we just decided that they won't, thanks to the short attention span of the computer-generation?

I should clarify that by "slow start," I don't mean boring. I mean good writing, good voice, good characters, and everything else needed for a book. I just mean stores that don't start out with frantic page-turning tension. Maybe they have that kind of tension later on, but not right off the bat.

Many aspiring first drafts start out with too much rambling. Too much backstory, too many character details, etc., etc. Those stories do need to cut down the front-end and start with the inciting incident. But what about memoirs? What about character-driven novels? What about quietly thought-inducing novels, what about stories that just cannot be told the way they need to be told if they start with a bang? Is there space for them in the YA world?

I want to say yes. I want to believe that if a book is good enough to be published, it will get published someday, no matter if it obeys the "key to a bestseller" guidelines or not.

But sometimes, I'm not sure I believe that anymore.

* i.e. The Scorpio Races. Loved it. But would it have been published if it was Maggie Stiefvater's debut, rather than Shiver?

less than three Back Cover Blurb (November Blog Chain)

2011-11-18T09:45:00.006-05:00

Holy &$*#%, next week is Thanksgiving already. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! Where did my sadly short summer go?

Ahem. On the bright side, mid-November means it's my turn in the November Blog Chain Hosted over at AbsoluteWrite!

This month's prompt?

Write up a back cover blurb for a book you have written or would like to write. It should be short, sweet, yet give a sense of people and events without totally spoiling the ending. The blurb may be for fiction or nonfiction as you see fit.

I was going to post the blurb for my as-yet-unfinished NaNovel, but I already spammed you guys with a summary recently. Instead, here's the back cover blurb I'd slap on the YA memoir I'm currently querying, <3 (less than three):

One click of a mouse can change your life.

In my junior year of high school, that click sends me to RavenBlack City: a fast-paced role-play game full of prankster vampires, evil ballerinas, and giant salsa pools. I start to fall for one guy there. He’s smart, a good listener, and best of all, he doesn’t laugh at my lame attempts at flirting. I get to know him better through the computer screen than anyone I’ve met in real life (because trust me, those are disasters).

Problem is, my character has a mind of her own. And she’s falling for someone different. Someone way too flirty and untrustworthy. Someone she’s supposed to be spying on. But whenever I’m upset, he's the one who stays up late to talk. He makes me smile again.

I have to figure out if my character is really a fictional being, or if maybe the fake persona I invented knows what I really want…

Oh, and the worst part of all? Both guys live 3,500 miles away.

You should also check out the other participants' blogs (I'll add direct post links when blogger stops being a BLEEP):

orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com
MysteryRiter - http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com/
AuburnAssassin - http://clairegillian.com/
Jarrah Dale - http://brattysramblings.blogspot.com/
SinisterCola - http://acgatesblog.wordpress.com/
dolores haze - http://dianedooley.wordpress.com/
pyrosama - http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/
Alynza - http://www.alynzasmith.blogspot.com/
writingismypassion - http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/
Cath - http://www.cathsmith.com/
Inkstrokes - http://drlong67.wordpress.com/
egoodlett - (that's me!)
LadyDae - http://ladydaewrites.blogspot.com/
SuzanneSeese - http://www.viewofsue.blogspot.com/
Anarchicq - http://anarchicq.com/
Stu Ayris - http://tollesburytimeforever.blogspot.com/

Teaser Tuesday (again)

2011-11-15T09:46:00.003-05:00

I can't believe how fast this month is going! Which is not a good thing when I'm trying to write a novel during it... I hit the halfway mark for NaNo yesterday, 25,000 words. I should've hit it on Sunday, but Sunday morning I was struck down with flu of death, and even though I stayed home sick yesterday, I only managed to write about 300 words. Le sigh!

Hopefully with some serious hydration, lots of tea, and much Advil Cold and Sinus (oh, how I love you, wonder drug that can potentially be used to make crystal meth, so I have to buy you from the pharmacy counter now...), I'll be able to keep up the pace this week.

Meanwhile, another teaser! Because I know you guys sooo adore these, yes?! har har.

Short background: my main character, Melika, is narcoleptic. This is right after she hallucinates an old woman on a bus patting her shoulder at her stop:

By the time I’ve climbed off the bus and peeked back at the window where I was seated, the woman has vanished.

A manifestation of my subconscious, my therapist would say. I knew I needed to get off the bus, so I invented the old woman to wake myself up. That’s all.

These shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe.

I don’t remember when I first started to see them. The first time I told anyone, I was eight years old. Before my diagnosis. One night, Mom found me in the kitchen bent over homework. It was 3 in the morning. She sat beside me. “Why don’t you sleep, honey?” she asked. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

I shook my head. “The people don’t come at night.”

She reached out and put her hand over mine, stopping my pencil in mid-stroke. “What people, Melika?” Her black eyes bored into mine, wide lips bent into a frown. I didn’t recognize the expression at the time. But looking back, I realize my mom was terrified.

“The quiet ones,” I said. I wasn’t able to articulate it, not yet. Still, even at eight years old, I knew nobody else saw these people. Sometimes they’d be people I knew. My grandparents, my old best friend Kayla, who moved to Georgia when I was 7, or anyone who’d been on my mind a lot that year. Freshman year, every quiet one I saw wore Hope Li’s face.

But some were strangers. An old man in the middle of the road Dad was speeding down. A child staring from the windows of a long-abandoned apartment complex. A burly, tattooed motorcycle man weaving through the crowd at my favorite coffee shop.

At times, I have trouble telling them apart from real people. I’ll tug on Paige’s sleeve and point them out. She’ll just laugh and shake her head. “Daydreaming again.”

As I grew older, I learned tricks for spotting them. They’d squeeze through impossibly tight gaps; they’d be hit by a car or run screaming into traffic and no one around me would react. I usually only spot them in the daytime, in public places. And the biggest giveaway of all: they always stare at me. Even downtown, where no one meets your eyes if they can avoid it, the quiet ones smile and incline their heads. Silent acknowledgment that we see each other.

But sometimes it’s still hard to tell reality from imagination.

50 Most Badass Literary Women

2011-11-09T09:39:00.000-05:00

Recently I posted a list of the 50 hottest men in literature, which my roomie and I worked out while bored. I didn't want to leave the ladies hanging, but I'm not the best judge of sex appeal in mujeres, considering I don't swing that direction, sooo, instead!

I give you my list of the 50 Most Badass Women in Literature:

50. Olivia Joules (Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination)
49. Laura (American Gods)
48. Gobi (Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick)
47. Tris (Divergent)
46. Ben (Princess Ben)
45. Miho (Sin City)
44. Mrs. Weasley (Harry Potter series)
43. Immacolata (Weaveworld)
42. Lizzie (Pride and Prejudice)
41. Yvaine (Stardust)
40. Athena (The Witch of Portobello)
39. Katsa (Graceling)
38. Rachel (the Animorphs series)
37. Harry (The Blue Sword)
36. Unnamed Narrator (The Historian)
35. Daenrys (Song of Fire and Ice)
34. Phèdre (Kushiel’s Dart)
33. Hua Mulan (Chinese legend, basis for Mulan)
32. Tally (the Uglies series)
31. Princess Leia (Star Wars)
30. Katarina (Heist Society)
29. Pie oh Pah (Imajica – depending if you read this character as a woman or not)
28. Granny Weatherwax (Discworld series)
27. Xena (Xena Warrior Princess)
26. Kate (The Taming of the Shrew)
25. Puck (The Scorpio Races)
24. Penelope (The Odyssey)
23. Anne Frank (Diary of Anne Frank)
22. Lucy (Chronicles of Narnia)
21. Lisbeth (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
20. Valentine Wiggin (Ender’s Game)
19. Hanna (Bleeding Violet)
18. Meg (A Wrinkle in Time)
17. Fire (Fire by Kristin Cashore)
16. Hermione (Harry Potter series)
15. Matilda (Roald Dahl)
14. Liesel (The Book Thief)
13. Alanna (The Song of the Lioness series)
12. Deryn (Leviathan)
11. Katniss (Hunger Games)
10. Mary Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie series)
9. Sheyrena (Elvenbane series)
8. Lyra (The Golden Compass)
7. Sabriel (Sabriel series)
6. Ginny (Harry Potter series)
5. Firekeeper (Through Wolf’s Eyes series)
4. Sophie (Howl’s Moving Castle)
3. Éponine (Les Miserables)
2. Éowyn (Lord of the Rings)

Aaaand finally, last but certainly not least, my personal heroine:

1. Hester Prynne (The Scarlet Letter)

Now, some of you are probably shaking your heads. Or thinking "WTF?" That might be because, in my book, badass =/= literally ass-kicking (or else someone like Katniss would probably be #1 on my list).

To me, being a badass means that you know who you are, you're true to yourself, and you aren't ashamed of it, damnit. That's why, to me, Hester is the embodiment of badassitude. Hester was like "Yeah, that's right. My husband's been missing for 10 years and is probably dead*, so I found a new lover. And yeah, that's right, I'm having his kid. SUCK IT, PURITANS." And then she went on living in her quietly badass way.

I'm sure I missed like a zillion badass ladies in this post, since I basically just scrolled through my Goodreads list trying to remember what classics had really badass chicas in them, so got any suggestions? Who are your favorite female up-starts?

* okay, so turns out he wasn't, but hey, how could she have known?

Another Teaser

2011-11-08T09:46:00.002-05:00

I know, I know, I promised I wouldn't spam you guys with these all month. But I can't resist! Plus, this is easier than trying to think of a blog post while my brain is fried from a weekend of NaNoing (seriously, I sat down in front of the computer at work today and turned it on, and then stared for like 3 minutes before I realized I had to boot up my email program for it to, you know, boot up. Sigh). Also, I think I may have caught the dread office flu. Dun dun dunnn...

This is from page 23 of Tears in the Ash, as the main character, Melika, is helping the search crews on Mt. Rainier look for Hope, who's gone missing:

I close my eyes and see that day. Funnily enough, we were on this same slope. Eighth grade class field trip to Wonderland Trail, over near the Paradise campgrounds. The whole class trooped along behind the guide, listening to her explain the various plants we were passing. Hope and I were at the back of the line. She took my hand, smiled and pulled me off the path, into the trees. The sun made her straight, glossy black hair shine, and when she squinted at me through those almond eyes, my only thought was how beautiful she was.

Hope was one of the few kids at school more foreign than me – whereas I was straight off the Hawaiian cruise liner, she was straight off the Beijing-Seattle direct flight. But in that forest, silhouetted in pine trees and highlighted in glimpses of cloud-streaked blue sky, she belonged. We both did. For an instant, that wild land belonged to us.

We didn’t speak. Not a word. She moved closer, and so did I. Her hand brushed mine, I curled my fingers between hers.

Back on the trail, someone shouted her name. “Hope?” The same syllable that echoes through the woods tonight.

I shut my eyes, and her lips brushed mine. My heart tried its best to beat through my ribcage. I didn’t know I liked girls too. Not yet. All I knew was that I liked her smile, and her mouth was soft on mine. I kissed her then, our bodies hovering almost a foot apart, so only our lips bridged the gap between us.

When we broke apart, we were both smiling. It’s important to me, now, to remember that the smiles came first.

But as we gazed into one another’s eyes – as another shout followed the first, this time calling my name – she shifted. Her eyes cooled first. Then the smile dripped from her lips, wax sinking from a candle. Before I could react, she was glaring at me.

“Don’t tell anyone,” she hissed. “Not a soul.” She extended her pinkie, hands shaking.

I hooked my finger around hers, too afraid to do anything else. “I swear.”

She squeezed once. “Good.”

That was the last word Hope Li ever said to me.

Best Comebacks of All Time

2011-11-04T10:38:00.000-04:00

The other day, while not procrastinating at all, I stumbled across the Wittiest Comebacks of All Time. Which is pretty damn fantastic, if you too are seeking to nooot procrastinate...

But my favorite (being the literary nerd that I am)?

Writing comeback WIN.

... And now, back to NaNoing like mad. By the way, don't expect very many coherent posts this month. I apologize in advance :P

The Future of Publishing

2011-11-02T11:21:00.000-04:00

Cute video!

Teaser Tuesday!

2011-11-01T12:30:00.005-04:00

Okay, I promise I won't spam you with these all month,* but in honor of Día Numero Uno, I couldn't resist! A teaser from my NaNo project, tentatively (and emo-ly) titled Tears in the Ash:

When I open my eyes, the world is on fire, and I cannot move. There is nothing before or after the burning ground that encases me, white-hot. My skin chars where it hardens around me, a boiling cement coffin. I look up for one last glimpse of the calm blue sky, and I see them smile at me – one with ember eyes and hair like fingers of flame, the other a skull, dripping seared flesh onto my chest. Smell of cooked meat invades my nostrils…

“Melika! She gets like this, you know, during an episode.”

“Should we move her? I mean, is it safe?”

The skull’s jaws part in a grotesque smile. Smoke pours from the slits where its nose should be. A thin wail pierces my eardrums.

Suddenly, my cheek hurts. “Mel!”

“Geez, don’t hit her.”

“Someone’s going to think she’s dying. Mel? Can you hear me?”

I nod at the ember eyes. They fade to coals, mellowing. A soft firelight now. “Paige?” My voice is a croak.

“Girl, you scared the shit outta me. Come on, move your butt. We need to get you home.”

“Where –” I cough once, hard. “Where are we?” As soon as I ask the question, I notice. My gaze darts from Paige’s to the mountain behind her. Mt. Rainier, Seattle’s timeless monument to the youth of the human race. I blink sleep from my eyes. I don’t remember coming here. Paige says something else, her voice so low I can’t hear.

That’s when I register the third person standing beside us. Logan. Oh god.

He saw me; heard the screaming. “Shit, sorry,” I mumble and drag myself into a sitting position. I’m sure I look like a certified lunatic now.

“Melika, listen, don’t look down, but…” Paige bites her lip.

Of course I immediately look down. And choke back another shriek.

My hands are covered in blood.

* Disclaimer: this may be a lie

Happy Halloween! (and a makeover)

2011-10-31T14:12:00.006-04:00

Who am I going as this Halloween?

THAT'S RIGHT! Steampunk Dr. Barlow!* (alternately, when people look too confused, I have also gone with Alexia Tarabotti or a weird variation on Irene Adler (when she's not dressed like a dude).

This was not at all an excuse to wear my tophat.

Aaanywaaaaay, moving right along... I have REDECORATED! The blog. In case you didn't notice. I finally got sick of the weird free-source template recoding all my photos into strange triangle-esque shapes, and not understanding how to code "left," "right" and "center." Plus I felt like simplification was in order.

In other news, I spent my lunch hour today making a pumpkin man! Because my office rocks.

... yes, he is ceramic. Do you really think they would trust us with KNIVES?! In this... office...?

Here's everyone else's pumpkins! We're going to vote on the winner this afternoon.

No, my office is not adult daycare... We are professionals! And very grown-up! ... Now if you'll excuse me, I have some work to finish before I go trick-or-treating, grab ingredients for Halloween punch, and settle in to watch Nightmare Before Christmas. Because tomorrow, I will not have time for fun and games! Tomorrow, NaNo begins... Gulp.**

* this blog is literally the only place where anyone might maybe possibly know who that refers to. cause none of my real friends do. if you don't get it, google it, and then pretend you do, for my sake? ;)

** and in honor of my writing beginning on All Hallow's Eve (at the stroke of midnight, of course), my next project will be a horror! wooOooOooo....***

*** okay, that's not really why, but it sounded very organized of me to claim... don't I plan ahead my projects so well?!

Procrastinating with Character Pics

2011-10-27T11:27:00.013-04:00

For the first time in a few years, November rolls around right as I'm poised to start work on a new project. Which means, I can attempt NaNoWriMo this year.* Huzzah! (Anyone else out there doing NaNo? When they add the writing-buddy-gadget, add me over there! I'm Ellen G.)

This year, I'm going to try a horror. It will probably turn out more thriller-y than horror-esque, because somehow all my genre attempts have a vein of thriller in them. But I'll try to amp up the creepitude in this book!

My short pitch?

16-year-old narcoleptic Melika Hale wakes up in a field beneath Mt. Rainier, covered in blood, with no memory of the past hour. She soon learns that her classmate Hope Li has been murdered. What nobody knows is that Hope was Melika's first kiss.

Desperate to find the killer, Melika drives the local police crazy with her theories. Meanwhile, her usual sleeplessness-induced hallucinations are getting worse. When Melika dreams a warning from a superstitious former neighbor telling her that the gods have chosen Melika as the pawn in their next reenactment, her search for a culprit takes her into the shelves of folklore.

The more Melika learns about the ancient legends of the Pacific Northwest, and those of her parents' native Hawaii, the more she starts to wonder if the answer lies closer to home. After all, the gods often hurt the ones they loved...

So, I have the pitch, I wrote a practice scene (which I won't count in my 50k, don't worry) to get a hang of Mel's voice, and I speed-plotted the book last week. What's a girl to do as she waits for November 1 to roll around now?

Browse for character photos, of course! I know you all want to see these. What's that? You have a debilitating allergy to other people's random character photos? Your cat texted to say his head's stuck in a cowboy boot and you have to go rescue him now?

I understand! But for those of you who might be bored like me... Or who want to stick around and ogle the hot male model I found for the love-interest... Here's my cast!

Melika Hale (narcoleptic, bisexual, aspiring modern dancer, Pacific Islander by nature and Seattleite by nurture):

(model: mary jenel)

Paige Driver (Melika's best friend, lead actress in the play, homecoming queen, class president, has a lot of acquaintances, but few close, real friends):

(model: PhoenixKRose)

Hope Li (our murder victim, salutatorian, classic pianist, very private, withdrawn, just accepted to Stanford):

(model: Xyooj Linda)

Alexander Chu (Hope's boyfriend, second-string quarterback, generous, but very competitive):

Morrigan (not her real name, total stranger who shows up at the funeral):

(model: Stacey Willow)

Aaaand I saved the bribery for last.

Logan Collins (Paige's boyfriend, lead actor in this year's musical, nice guy, kind of a partier):

(model: Andre Barcelo)

P.S. - if any of you have read this far, a) I owe you giveaways soon and b) question: does "Tears in the Ash" sound too emo for a horror title? I want to play around with the whole volcanic glass metaphor, but... sigh!

* If you haven't heard of it, that's National Novel-Writing Month. To win, you have to write 50k words (a novel) in the month of November.

"Write What You Know"

2011-10-24T13:41:00.005-04:00

People say do it. People say don't do it. Mostly I ignore both of them and write somewhere in between (usually set in dystopias or sci-fi universes, because that gives me a little more leeway, in case I don't get police procedure or bureaucratic disputes exactly right).

But for the first time, in my new WIP, the percentage of elements in the narrative that I don't know outweighs what I do. It's set somewhere I've been, but haven't lived. It involves folklore I haven't grown up listening to. The main character has a disorder that I'm not familiar with from first-person experience. It's going to take a lot of research to write this accurately.

Don't get me wrong, I do research for all of my novels, but this one's going to take more hard-core digging than usual. I'll need to spend time in the library, interview people who have experienced these things, and triple-check my sources on the mythology I'm using.

So what makes me think I can write this book? What gives me the right to tell this story, when it's not personally connect to my life in, well, any form?

I do know the characters' emotions. While I haven't experienced what I'm going to put them through in this book, I've experienced the type of problems they'll face. Self-doubt. Alienation. Confusion. Betrayal. Sorrow. Regret.

That's what makes stories universal. Because underneath all the books and fairy tales and T.V. shows and movies about specific stuff we don't know -- like how forensic anthropologists help solve murders or what astrophysicists do for fun on the weekends -- there's an emotional story we've all experienced first-hand.

So here's to not knowing what the hell I'm getting myself into with this next project, and here's to knowing I'll enjoy the ride!

P.S. -- but if you do something awesome for a living like use your eidetic memory to catch criminals, or if you grew up in a Buddhist monastery, then you should write about what you know. Just saying. Cause I'd read it.

Life's Weird Twists

2011-10-21T10:17:00.003-04:00

Last Friday, I was in my boss's office going over super important paperwork, and not at all gossiping about Amazon taking over the publishing world. In the midst of our very productive meeting, he mentioned an email he'd received recently, which he thought was funny. It was a casting call for a reality TV show called King of the Nerds.

I laughed too. Then I went back to my desk, stared at the poster, and realized I fit into at least 5 of the categories listed. I was a bit morally conflicted. As a writer, I have a duty to hate reality TV, don't I? Since it basically eliminates us from the picture?

On the other hand, I do watch America's Next Top Model obsessively. And sometimes Top Chef. Or X-Factor. andokoccasionallygenesimmonsfamilyjewels.*

So, in a fit of not-avoiding-work-at-allll, I fired off a quick email to the casting people. What the hell. Couldn't hurt, right?

Two hours later, I had a voicemail on my phone from an LA number asking me to send in a video application, because I sounded great.

So... That was a little surreal! But I called upon my good blogging buddy and cohort in crime, Corrie (do you like my alliteration!?), who despite her busy weekend work schedule, agreed to squeeze in some filming time before lunch on Sunday.

I showed up at her house with a suitcase full of the nerdiest stuff I could pack. Cloak that Mom specially made for me in high school during my elven phase (and also because I couldn't buy a regular one as I am allergic to wool)? Check. Sterling silver Evenstar and fake-gold-plated One Ring, complete with inscription? Check. Ravenclaw T-shirt/sweatshirt/backpack/scarf? Check. RenFest outfit? Check. ... and so on.

The casting director told me to have fun filming this, so we did. You can hear us both giggling throughout most of the video (best part? at the end of one scene when you can hear Corrie whisper "SMILE!"). I felt a little crazy at some sections (like when I reenacted the Battle of Wits scene from Princess Bride. by myself. playing all 3 parts**). But it was a good kind of crazy!

I wish I could show you the finished version, but alas, I have pledged to the mighty King of the Nerd keepers that I shall keep the video unlisted... And probably posting it on a blog would be frowned upon. Yea verily.

But! I had a few more calls from the casting people, sent in some forms and such, and now they are pitching me to their executive producers...*** Even if I don't get chosen for the show, it's been a fun week. And I have a hilarious video to remember it by.

Plus, now I can check "being considered for part on reality TV show" off my bucket list!****

* Shamefulconfession

** Which, considering I have exactly no acting experience whatsoever, is just as FANTABULOUS as you are imagining. If you are imagining a train wreck ;)

*** Cue EEK-ing

**** Now we just need to get them to make a reality TV show about people competing to write the most awesome novel in a month OMGTURNNANOWRIMOINTOREALITYSHOW. Oh wait, that would just be people sitting in front of computers with messy hair and lots of coffee. Hmm...

The Future of Reading

2011-10-14T14:56:00.002-04:00

The future is already here.
*insert dramatic/scary sounds*

Don't Query Too Soon

2011-10-07T10:09:00.002-04:00

If any of you remember, back around the time of the fabulosity that is WriteOnCon, I had a sort of hysterical-sounding post mentioning a writer-mergency.

Basically, I was almost done with the memoir. Not really finished. But I thought I could tie up edits in the next couple of weeks, maybe. And WriteOnCon was ending that day. So I decided to post up the first page and a query just for some feedback.

The problem was, an agent requested a full.

Okay, so that was somewhat good. It meant my query letter was ready. But the manuscript wasn't. I sent a similarly hysteria-induced email to my poor abused crit-group with some pages I'd been having trouble with, asking for feedback.* Then I locked myself inside with pizza and popcorn, and revised. All weekend.

Yes, I managed to get a decent draft of the story out the door the next week. Yes, the agent was complimentary in her rejection letter.

But if I'd just waited a few more weeks, and queried her normally with a project that was actually where I wanted it to be, maybe that letter wouldn't have been a rejection.

Moral of the story? Posting samples in conferences like WriteOnCon is tempting**. Querying immediately when you finish a good draft is tempting.

DON'T DO IT. Wait until you are absolutely sure your draft is so polished that you can see your writing-weary face reflected in its surface before you send your baby out. Because chances are, there are still more problems hiding beneath that shiny surface. Problems you haven't even noticed, but that your potential agent might pick up. So you want to make sure there isn't a single problem you would've caught yourself to compound the issues they see.

I know most of you are probably thinking "duh, thanks Captain Obvious"... But in case any of you are antsy*** like me, just thought I'd put the example out there!

Now, back to polishing the heck outta the memoir. I've almost got the final scratches rubbed out!

* At the time, I thought it was just 20 pages I copied and pasted. It was 40. Note to self: Stop spamming poor writer's group with emergencies. <3

** Though you could probably post your query letter to WOC's forums and just mention that it's not 100% complete yet, so that agents don't query you expecting the full to be available. That would be fine.

*** coughimpatientcough

In Case You're Wondering Where I've Been

2011-10-05T10:08:00.001-04:00

This pretty much sums it up. Back soon! After I finish this latest round of edits! <3

Imago

2011-09-24T14:54:00.008-04:00

Imago (n): The last stage of development of an insect, after emergence from the pupa.

I watch the moth crack from its cocoon. Stretch its wings in slow, exultant circles, stirring the miasma of the closed cell. I am no longer alone.

What feeble sun seeps through the cracked bars on the window dries the shine from its delicate gray scales. Suddenly I am afraid. He was here when I arrived. Weaving his bed in the derelict corner between the toilet and the stained wall. We were two of a kind. Locked in synchronicity, both of us stagnant. But he has changed. He has evolved.

Now he tilts toward the sun, balanced on the lacuna between the bars, a space thin enough for him to slip through. Not me. Never me.

I will be alone again. Alone to rot here. Alone to ruminate, oscitate, masticate. And now that they’ve stopped coming with the supplies, stopped cleaning the reeking mess bucket in the corner or leaving water inside the door, I will dehydrate. Deteriorate. Suffocate.

I slap my hand, palm down, on those bright, clean wings, as hard as I can.

I will not die alone.

An entry for the second campaigner challenge of Rachael Harrie's Platform-Building Campaign. Prompt: Write a blog post of less than 200 words, using Imago in the title, and the including the words miasma, lacuna, oscitate and synchronicity.

If you liked this, please like it on the linky list (scroll down to the "Click Here" area, then I'm number 83! with the really uncreative title, oops.)

What Makes You Beautiful (or, Hair Angst)

2011-09-23T10:26:00.016-04:00

My crit-group partner and bearer of awesomely curly hair, Ghenet, has a YA Cafe post up today about teens and body image. More specifically, about her love-hate relationship with her curls. Which was a well-timed read for me (thanks Ghenet!) because yesterday I chopped my hair off.

I have a love-hate relationship with my hair too. Maybe it's a curly-haired-person thing? Basically, when I was little, I haaaated it. My mom has enviable stick-straight hair, so she didn't really understand how to work curls (i.e. don't brush them when they're dry, because it REALLY HURTS and turns you into a Hermione-frizz-head. Also, don't cut them super-short or they become a triangle).

(i mean, just look how angry i was about it! ... hmm.)

In my early teenage years, this continued to cause angst. Why couldn't my hair just be straight like everyone else's? And behave. And not look so WEIRD. BLAH.

But after my teen years, as I grew it longer, and longer, and longer, I came to love the curls. Yes, it was an unruly mess. At its longest, it would snatch glasses off the faces of passersby. Get stuck on doorknobs and nearly rip out my scalp. In one particularly memorable moment, my hair got caught on the buttons of some guy walking past me in the Penguins hockey stadium. My brother had to chase him down while I staggered along, dragged by the scalp, to tell him that his sister was attached to his coat.

When I finally got hired for a Real Job in an Office Where You Should Probably Not Look Like a Hippy, I cut it to around shoulder length, with layers (and posted about it! sensing a theme here...). It grew back over the last couple years, and something strange happened.

My hair wasn't exactly straight. That will probably never happen. But it was definitely not as curly. In fact, most of the time, it was wavy.

Suddenly I missed that hair I'd hated so much and fought with while growing up. And after growing up. Was this karmic retribution? Had I complained one too many times about the curls? It felt like losing part of my identity. Something that defined me -- people recognized my hair. Now what would they recognize?

Yesterday, I went into the salon and told them I wanted to donate to Locks of Love. I did not know how many inches minimum you needed to donate. it was more than I expected. But I asked the stylist to do it anyway. And it's funny -- after he cut the first length off, as he was further chopping and styling my remaining locks, watching it poof higher and higher while he brushed, he said, "You know, you have such beautiful curls."

So maybe it's not as curly as it used to be. Maybe it still looks wavy to me in the mirror. Maybe if it was still as curly as it used to be, I'd be complaining about that instead. But I did have to laugh at my teenaged self,* as I held the braid that used to be 10 inches of my hair.

There are so many worse problems to have than curly/wavy/straight hair. Some people don't have any hair at all. Some people's hair loss is the least of their problems. So here's hoping that this small tail of not-quite-curly kind-of-wavy hair will make someone else feel a little bit more confident. Or better yet, here's hoping that whoever it goes to doesn't need that confidence boost, because they already know they're awesome, no matter what's on their head.

And if you haven't read Ghenet's post today, you really should hop over there. It's a great essay!

* Okay, and myself, like, yesterday morning. Let's face it, the angst doesn't stop when you hit 20. *optimism*

Crapper Story

2011-09-20T23:09:00.004-04:00

As much as I enjoy a good story, I've never been a huge history fan. It's always so dry and hard to follow... Plus my history teacher had one of those lull-you-to-sleep type of voices.

But I love tours. Especially tours of weird places. Like ghost tours. Or underground city tours.

So when I heard about Seattle's Underground City tour, I had to check it out!

But at first, I was concerned. Pre-tour, they sat us down in this tiny room to talk about "the history of the city." Oh god, I thought. Bored-time.

Then they mentioned the toilets. (fair warning, this story is not for the squeamish.)

How can the history of a crapper relate to a whole city's past? Well, apparently back in the late 1800s, Seattle consisted of some mud flats leading down to the water, and some cliffs up around 3rd Avenue. As you might expect, the wealthier citizens lived up on the high-and-dry cliffs, and the not-so-well-endowed dwelled in the prone-to-flooding flats.

The wealthy people got a shipment one day, all the way from Europe, of Mr. Crapper's new invention. Indoor plumbing, hurrah! They opened the boxes to find brand-new porcelain thrones, ready to assemble and use (pics here are the genuine antique article, by the way). They assembled the pieces, went to connect it to the city sewer system, and... huh.

Realized there was no city sewer system. So they went down to the lumber mill, pulled out some planking, and built a big tube, about 4x4 feet. They ran this tube down the hill from the cliffs, across the mud flats, and straight out into the bay (because back then, this little thing called sanitation does not exist).

Huzzah! Problem solved. Toilets now flush properly. Everyone is happy.

... Until high tide the next morning. Right as the tide reaches its peak, when it swells to cover most of the mud flats, it fills the end of this wooden tube... And when a tube is blocked at one end by rising water, and having an entire town's worth of sewage pour into it from the other end, high up on a cliff... Well, that's going to build up a lot of pressure.

If you happened to be extremely unlucky, and moved to flush your toilet at that particular moment, pulling the chain to release the plug blocking your toilet from the rest of the sewer system...

Bam. Exploding toilet. Like, 4-6 feet of sewage bursting into the air in front of you.

Another cool tidbit? Until several years later when the town finally fixed the sewer system, know what saved people the messy business of having the sewer blow up in their faces?

The newspapers printed the tide charts for the week on the front page.*

This tour definitely taught me one thing. History isn't boring! ... As long as you aren't shy about the dirty, crappy details. That's the fun part, really.**

* Go newspapers!

** This story, and many others on the tour, were taken from Bill Speidel's book, Sons of the Profits, about the early history of Seattle. Basically, he noticed that a lot of young people like me were bored by their history classes. And he realized that it was because the history textbooks left out all the good parts (like how the "seamstresses" *coughladiesofthenightcough* saved Seattle). So he wrote a book to tell the honest history. Including the embarrassing bits.

Teaser Tuesday

2011-09-20T14:16:00.005-04:00

Haven't done one of these in a while! Teaser from my newly-finished YA memoir, less than three:

SNIPPED!

Thanks for the feedback <3

Wise Words from Kids

2011-09-19T09:06:00.003-04:00

I was at a museum in Calgary when I stumbled across this chalkboard in the "Discovery Room." There, kids are encouraged to think about and write responses to a prompt for the day. Here's a snapshot of that day's prompt:

A pretty good question, with a lot of good answers (including one about how we should rethink celebrity on 9/11 -- the day I was at the museum). But this one struck me the most (not the "Annie was here" part, although that's cute):

Isn't that just perfectly worded? Could not have said it better myself. I think there's a budding future writer there...

Giveaway Winner! And I'm back!

2011-09-16T17:48:00.004-04:00

I'm back from my odyssey to the west coat! I successfully avoided being eaten by a grizzly bear, or drowning in the delicious seafood out in Seattle. Though I kind of got addicted to Pike Market.

I didn't want to leave! But Canada was amazing too. Hiked the Rockies, bathed in a hot spring... So much awesomeness.
But before I get further sidetracked, I am (way) overdue for giving you all a contest winner! Without further ado, courtesy of Random.org, the winner of Maggie Stiefvater's the Scorpio Races is...

Kerri Cuevas!

Congrats, Kerri! Email me your address and I'll send the book along :)

And now to put all the various scribbled pages I wrote while halfway up a glacier in some semblance of order... woo!

Hoarding Favorite Authors

2011-09-10T01:44:00.002-04:00

Some people gobble down books by their favorite authors as fast as they can find them. Me, I hoard them. Save them like pieces of fancy chocolate to treat myself whenever the mood really strikes.

My first night in Seattle for this conference, I went browsing around Pike Market, an adorable old-fashioned marketplace right above the bay, with this fantastic view of the water. Naturally, I hit the local bookstore first, before it closed. And there on the center shelf sat a Jeanette Winterson novel. Written on the Body.

I’d never read this particular one, although people call it her masterpiece. I think The Passion would be hard to top (though she nearly managed it in Sexing the Cherry). But the mood had struck, so I picked this one from the shelf, found myself a cozy little French café in which to dine, and started to read.

From the very first line, she caught me as usual. "Why is the measure of love loss?"

That’s the thing about Jeanette Winterson books. I want to quote just about every line. They’re all so poetic, so hauntingly written, and yet they evoke the exact emotion we all experience with regards to love, passion, regret. Months later, I still have lines of her writing stuck in my head, like the chorus of a particularly catchy song.

It’s been a few years since I’ve read one of her novels, because if I had to narrow my enormous list of favorite authors down to one person – whose body of work would I want with me if I were stranded on a deserted island – she’d be the one. I hoard her titles especially close. I only read one every few years.

I’m so glad that the time has come to pick up another one. I’m only fifteen pages into Written on the Body, because I read her writing slowly. Savor the taste for as long as possible. But I’m enjoying the process.

In the meantime, Seattle is gorgeous. Expect pictures as soon as I return. I promise not to bore you with the vacation-y ones! (well, okay... maybe I might bore you a little. ;) )

Oops

2011-09-02T10:47:00.002-04:00

So, due to some poor planning ahead by yours truly,* I am on a business trip when my contest was supposed to close. OOPS.

But this is good news for you all! Because I'm keeping the contest open until I get back on September 14th! And also because I'm throwing in a few extra books due to feeling bad!

The ultimate winner will still receive the signed copy of Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races. But two runners up will win copies of either Delirium by Lauren Oliver OR Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer (author of Life As We Knew It).

I haven't read Delirium yet, but here's my review of Blood Wounds:

Blood Wounds by Susan Beth Pfeffer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely an interesting read... Willa's family life is convoluted and complicated, but also probably similar to a lot of modern families, with all of her step-siblings and step-parents and parents of her step-sisters and her estranged father-turned-murderer back in the home town she doesn't remember. There was a lot going on, but not in a bad way. I think the author did a great job of keeping all the varied sides of Willa's life understandable.

Personally, I had some difficulty connecting to the main character. I sympathized with her, of course, with all of the horrible things happening in her life... And I understood her choices, and by the end I came to appreciate her understated strength. I think she was just so quiet for most of the book -- we see all these things happening to her, but we don't see her reactions or what she really feels about it all.

Then again, that could have been intentional, since as a character, she bottles up all of her emotions to begin with.

I did enjoy this one. If you're in the mood for a dark contemporary read, it's worth a look!

View all my reviews

Anyway, to win, all you need to do is COMMENT ON THIS POST. Yay, etc!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go escape the natural-disaster-ridden East Coast and go ~~explore Seattle~~ work at a conference in Seattle. Oh, it will be so horrible. Cough cough. ;)

* I was distracted by moving everything I own up from my basement apartment to the first floor and then back down again when we got no flooding and our mayor is ridiculous for making us evacuate because we live on a hill in the first place?

150 Followers Giveaway: The Scorpio Races!

2011-08-25T12:03:00.004-04:00

Quick post due to huge storm about to attack, wherein I will probably lose internet, but! I've reached 150 followers! THANK YOU GUYS!!! You're all so awesome! And in light of this momentous (for me, shush, I'm easily excited) occasion, I think I should GIVE STUFF AWAY. Right?!

I've been saving a good one for you. I've got a SIGNED copy of Maggie Stiefvater (author of Linger and Shiver)'s new book THE SCORPIO RACES.

My review from Goodreads:

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one started out a little slow for me, but by the end, I had really fallen in love with it. If you're a fan of fast hooks and speed-reads, this one might not be for you. But if you enjoy a slow-building story, and complex characters, you'll love this book.

I was really impressed by how realistic Maggie Stiefvater made Thisby, the island where these mythical races take place. It felt gritty and wild and so real that, not going to lie, at one point I googled it to check if it existed. I also love the way she took tiny pieces of an obscure mythology (I mean, sea horses who eat people? I love me some mythos, but even I'd never heard that one before) and wove them into such a complex tale that it almost takes on a mythology of its own. The people of Thisby have a thousand tiny rituals that revolve around the horses and the Scorpio races, from the clothes they wear to the strange celebrations they hold, to the way they make wishes.

I also enjoyed that this book felt so timeless. Coming out of a string of YA novels that are very firmly set in a certain time period, I liked that you couldn't quite place when this one happens. I figured it was in the UK somewhere early on, just going by the Brit-speak in it. But you're never really sure if "the mainland" they constantly refer to is England, Scotland, Ireland maybe? The horse names were clearly Gaelic, but that doesn't really narrow it down. And I like that you never find out. I'd also been picturing it happening in a modern-day, kind of backwater technology-less town, until one of the reporters makes a comment like "were you inspired by the women's suffregettes?" to the main character, and then I thought maybe it was supposed to be earlier in the 20th century... But who knows!

For me, the book picked up around the middle, when the two main characters finally start to interact and train for the races. Before that, although the prose was gorgeous and the characters all interesting, the plot sort of slacked for me. I think my biggest problem with the book was that I could not understand why Puck/Kate, the main female character, was entering these deadly races. So I was having a hard time connecting to her in the beginning. That's sort of remedied later on, though, because she acknowledges that she doesn't know why she's doing it either, so maybe it's not really a problem. Could just be me!

At any rate, this one is definitely worth a read! And I've only read half of Shiver, so don't take me too seriously on this, but I get the feeling it's very different from that series.

View all my reviews

To enter, all you need to do is comment below! That's it! But if you follow the blog and/or tweet about the contest (I'm @egoodlett over there), I would be eternally grateful. And give you bonus points and stuff. :)

Now, I am off to stock up on emergency supplies, since last time we had a power outage, my roomie and I were left with 2 packets of crackers, approximately 300 candles but no matches or lighters, and a flashlight with a dead battery. WE ARE SO PREPARED. Bring it on, Hurricane Irene.

(ETA: contest will close September 2nd!)

Writer's Campaign: Build Your Online Platform

2011-08-24T11:17:00.002-04:00

I heard about this a few months ago, and I've been anxiously waiting all summer for the next campaign to open. Rachael Harrie hosts this platform building campaign regularly. Here's the basic premise:

There are a ton of us writers/authors/bloggers/industry people online trying to build our online platform. So why not join forces and help each other build our platforms, while building ours at the same time?

This particular campaign runs from August 22nd to October 31st, and there are still spots available (but sign up fast because it's closing soon!). Some more details about the events from Rachael's post:

During the Campaign, I'll be running Campaigner Challenges and the Campaigner Notice-Board. Other than that, go for your life! I've set up a Campaigner Yahoo Group here, for you to chat among yourselves, and there'll be lots of Twitter-talk at #writecampaign.

Mark these dates in your diary now:

First Campaigner Challenge - Monday, September 5
Second Campaigner Challenge - Thursday, September 22
Third Campaigner Challenge - Monday, October 17

Each Friday I'll be running a Campaigner Notice-Board, where you can announce blogfests, book launches, things you'd like to share with your other Campaigners, etc etc. You'll need to send me the information in advance, and I've made up a form to make things easier. If you want me to include your details in this Friday's post (August 26), please fill out this form.

I think this is a great opportunity to meet new people, gain new followers, find new blogs to read... And just to have fun :)

Also, if you sign up, let me know!

Ain't Is Too a Word

2011-08-23T10:26:00.006-04:00

So, I had a different post planned (featuring various photos like this of things my cat has destroyed. Yes, he ate my flip-flop. And attacked my brand-new MacBook Pro. Funny story!). But luckily for you all, now you don't have to listen to more cat stories. Yet. Instead you get a new rant! Yay! Don't you love rants?!

I should preface this by saying: I did not major in Creative Writing (though not for lack of trying). Or English (because those discussions made me want to defenestrate books I otherwise loved).* I studied Linguistics.

For those of you who don't really know what that is (because I didn't until I signed up to major in it. I plan ahead so well!): Linguistics is the study of human language.

Not relatively-recently-constructed grammatical speech rules. Human language. How it's actually used, and how we actually speak.**

One of the things I loved about linguistics was studying dialects. English has hundreds of dialects. Some of them are so different from ours that it's hard to believe they're the same language (try wandering around the streets of Glasgow if you want an example. Or listen for some Pennsylvania Dutch next time you're in Amish country). As my professors so often loved to quote, the only difference between dialects and whole new languages is that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

Back in the day, when we all lived in relative seclusion from people just a few townships over, accents could vary dramatically within a small area. Northern England is still a fantastic example of this. I was standing in a taxi queue in Newcastle one time, listening to a discussion that went something like "You first, mate." "Oh, Barmston aye?" "Weyhey. Whitley Bay?" <-- those towns are about a 30 minute drive apart. In those few words, the speakers could both tell where the other was from.***

However, since the advent of T.V., something has shifted. In the U.S., the Standard Midwestern accent (that spoken by our newscasters and most actors) has become the accent to speak. It's considered the educated speech pattern for most USians.**** If you speak with a Brooklyn accent, for example, your teachers will probably train it out of you. Teach you to speak "normally" (or worse, "without an accent"*****).

That's fine for job interviews and all. I get it. People have a bias against anyone who speaks with a dialect. But I just need to say:

ACCENT/DIALECT =/= INTELLIGENCE.

HOW someone speaks in NO WAY indicates his/her brain's cognitive abilities. If someone speaks like a hillbilly, they might lack a formal education, or they might resist conforming to normal linguistic biases, but THEY ARE NOT NECESSARILY STUPID. Others might PERCEIVE them as a bit thick, yes.

But if, for example, you're writing a story with characters who have thick accents... You do not have to make them dumb. Nor do you have to tone down their accents to make them sound smart (though you might not want to spell out every word in a thick brogue, because that would get hard to read). They can be intelligent and use the word "ain't."

Because you know what? Ain't is a word. We all know what it means. Just because it "isn't proper" does not mean that's not how people speak in everyday life.

Writing dialogue is not about following English grammar rules to the letter.****** It's about figuring out, linguistically, how people really talk. And trying to get your writing as close to that as possible.

Characters with accents can be hard to write. You need to balance their weird expressions with "normal" English just enough so that the reader hears the accent without stumbling over the sentence structure. It takes practice. It takes a good ear, especially if the accent you're writing isn't your native one.

But if you can do it well, go for it. At first glance it will probably make people stereotype your character. But then you get to subvert said stereotype for the rest of the story. Show people why their prejudice against weird dialogues/accents is erroneous. Because isn't that the best part about writing? Showing people that something different ain't always bad?

... And if this rant did not make very much sense, I blame the Starbucks. I'm not used to caffeinating this early.

* Please don't kill me if you're an English major! Not saying English is a bad major. In fact, it was way too hard for me, which is why I avoided it. All that analyzing wasn't my cup of tea.

** By the way, young writers, if you also hate English classes but love writing, linguistics classes are a fantastic way to learn how to write realistic dialogue.

*** All sounded just as bloody indecipherable to me, but that is because I have untrained foreigner ears!

**** Not saying they didn't have a bias toward certain accents back in the day, just that it was a less wide-spread bias. Unless you were super-rich, it probably didn't matter how you spoke.

***** This is a whole other rant for another day, but let me just say: NOBODY HAS "NO" ACCENT. If you speak out loud, then you have an accent. If you think you don't, chances are your accent is Standard Midwestern American. Just saying. /end pet peeve rant.

****** Well, okay, rules like punctuation and spelling are good to follow to the letter. I meant like "don't say ain't" and "don't use 'them' as a gender-neutral singular pronoun for 'someone' because it's improper" kind of rules.

Current Status

2011-08-19T23:17:00.003-04:00

Current Status of Hair: Giant rat's nest attacking skull.
Current Status of Face: Let us not discuss this break-out, shall we? It would get messy.
Current Status of Cats: Attention-starved monsters attempting to eat my feet. And/or shoes.
Current Status of Apartment: Massive explosion of clutter has obviously occurred. Also, some kitty-food-shrapnel has hidden itself under various cushions. And I don't even want to know what the splotch I wiped off of the computer earlier was made of. And sink exploded for real too this week. Plumbers have been intimidated into telling landlord we require replacement. Plumbers have not been seen since. Sigh.
Current Status of Computer: Low on battery power, and scorching my retinae.
Current Status of Edits from Crit-Partners: Strewn about house in out-of-order piles, adding to clutter explosion.
Current Status of Roomies: Likely highly annoyed at me for planting self on couch all week.
Current Status of Blog: Quite obviously neglected. I AM SORRY YOU GUYS.
Current Status of Inbox: Terrifying.
Current Status of Memoir: DONE. ISH. OKAY I AM SORT OF PREMATURELY CELEBRATING BUT IT'S A LONG STORY. Basically, it's at that stage where I'm pretty sure I've done everything I can to it. And my crit partners are sick of seeing it. But I'm still tempted to hunt down and ~~capture~~ coerce one more beta reader into giving it a read-through before I start to send it out.

ALSO I HAVE A HILARIOUS WRITER-MERGENCY* STORY. But I will tell you that next week. So that I have something to write about after my brain implodes. And also because right now I need to go sort out my life.

*stares in horror at self in mirror and wipes up pool of water from the exploded sink*

* It was such a writerly-panic-y type situation I had to make up a word for it. Also I may have broke the thesaurus this week, and just resorted to inventing phrases. Shh.

Winners!!

2011-08-08T23:02:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the delayed announcement! Crazy weekend. Involving a trip to the Jersey Shore (though not the scary parts), classy French films that were also pretty depressing and a train ride to Boston.

Anyway! More on that later. When I'm not leaching hotel internet late at night...

WINNERS. Usually I do this with more fanfare. And less use of random.org. Sorry guys. To make up with it, here are some inspirational speeches.

THAT'S HOW WINNING IS DONE!

Anyway. Winners! Yes! Here you are, in no particular order (winners, email me to claim prizes: egoodlett(at)yahoo(dot)com! Everyone else, don't worry! More giveaways soon!):

Janitors: lee

Villain School: Kathy Ann Coleman

Liesl and Po: The Reader's Antidote

Wisdom's Kiss: erinbrambilla

YAY, book-sharing!! Hope you guys enjoy them. :)

Liebster Blog Award!

2011-08-04T12:38:00.002-04:00

For those of you who have not entered yet (*lures you with shiny objects*), my fantasy ARC giveaway ends tomorrow! You could win books from fantabulous authors like Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Dairy Queen, Princess Ben) and Lauren Oliver (Before I Fall, Delirium)! And if fantasy isn't your thing, stick around next week, because I'll be starting another giveaway. Because my roommates have started to protest the books slowly taking over the living room (and dining room, and kitchen, and bathrooms*)....

Anyway! I wanted to say THANKS to my super-awesome crit-partner Ghenet, who passed on the Liebster Blog Award yesterday!

She is adorable, and also runs a pretty kickass young adult book club, YA Cafe, over at her blog, which you should check out!

So the goal of the Liebster Blog Award is to spotlight your favorite up-and-coming bloggers. Rules are:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Have faith that your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.
5. And most of all - have bloggity-blog fun!

Here are my top 5 picks of bloggers you should follow (in no particular order):

1. Corrie Wachob. Another one of my lovely crit-partners (not that I'm biased!) who blogs about her adventures living as a super-hip chick in Brooklyn, exploring the northeast, dancing hip-hop, and going out for drinks with yours truly. Cause we're cool like that. And totally not the alkies she makes it sound like.

2. Blurb is a Verb. Okay, yes, I know I guest-posted for them recently, but I SWEAR I read the blog before that too! It's chock-full of great marketing and publicity advice, plus interesting, informative guest posts with other authors, bloggers and generally book-obsessed people. Much loves.

3. Melanie Santiago. I love her new blog series, "book reviews in 30 words" (inspired by those movies in 30-seconds by bunnies videos). Plus she has some really great How Not to (Ab)Use Twitter advice.

4. Sophia Richardson. Her genre-of-the-month review series has been a great read (this month = thrillers!), plus she always has inspiring content in her Friday Favorites.

5. Caitlin Darrell. She always has fun, upbeat posts about writing, reading and surviving rejection. Plus she has some great contests! And of course, Harry Potter. Automatic win!

So there you go, my friends. More people for you to stalk! I know you all love that!**

Tomorrow, I'll be announcing the (many!) winners of the fantasy ARC giveaway. Stay tuned!

* What, you don't have books in your bathroom? What do you use all those shelves for? Soap? Pfffft.

** Don't deny your inner stalker!

Write What Scares You

2011-08-01T08:45:00.001-04:00

Exciting news! Today I have a guest post up on Blurb is a Verb, thanks to the lovely Sarah Pinneo. YAY!! You should go check it out (and you should follow the blog, because she posts some seriously great marketing tips). Anyway, back to the regularly scheduled post!

We've all heard the "what to write" sayings before. Write what you know (which like most great writing advice, should be ignored about half the time). Write what you love (which unlike most great writing advice, should always be followed*).

But I've got a new favorite. "Write what scares you."

I've written a lot over the years. From third grade stories about tiny people who lived inside my bubble lamp/digital clock, all the way up through a few full-length novels, one of which I think is maybe publishable. But if you've been following this blog for a while, you've probably heard me talk about my latest project. Kind of a lot. Never fear, I'm still working on it, so I'm sure there will be plenty of existential angst-type posts to come on the subject (I know, YAY right??).

But the best part about this project, for me as a writer, is that it scares the sh*t out of me.

I'm serious. I've been rewriting and bagging and then reconsidering and reattempting (shush that's a word) this thing for years. It's like that one video game, that you just know you can't play, because there's that really freaking scary bear hiding in the corner halfway through level one, but you keep trying it over and over, because your childhood pride depends on it.** That story hung around on the back-burner, just far enough back in my mind that I could write other novels in the meantime, but just close enough that I couldn't forget about it.

And you know what? When I finally decided to face my fears, that bear didn't turn out to be so scary after all.*** It's only a writing project. Like dozens I've tackled before.

The best part about facing down that scary idea, about writing what terrified me, is that I'm free now. Even if this project doesn't find a home at a fancy publishing house or a hip indie press or a freelance-edited Amazon webpage. I've conquered it now. After this project, I can write anything you want to throw at me. Novel with dancing koalas addicted to peanut butter that is also a serious reflection upon the human condition? BRING IT ON.****

I've stared into the face of my own insecurity, and I am a better writer for it. So while I do write what I love, and I try to write what I know where possible, the motto I'm sticking with is to write what scares you. Because chances are that the reason it scares you is because it's your best idea so far. It scares you because you aren't sure your skills are up to capturing the epic storyline in your head. It scares you because you know if you succeed in writing this Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, you've got nothing else up your sleeve. No back-burner projects to lean on if things go down the tubes. No secret wild cards hidden up your sleeve, because this is your wild card.

You know what I think? It's time to play that card.

What about you? Are there any projects you've let simmer longer than you should because you were scared to tackle them? Have you ever written what scared you? How did it go? INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.*****

In other news, there's still a week left to enter here for the chance to win: Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock; Liesl and Po (SIGNED) by Lauren Oliver; Villain School: Good Curses Evil by Stephanie Sanders; and Janitors (Book 1) by Tyler Whitesides. Considering how many books are up for grabs, the odds are pretty good!

* Unless, you know, you're a little behind on bills and have to take up freelance writing about very boring things like how to keep animals out of your garden by sprinkling human hair around the place to "mark your territory," in which case you're probably not going to "love" what you're writing, but hey...

** Okay, that was a bad metaphor. It's really early right now. But seriously. Did anyone else fall into the bear pit in Tomb Raider? WTF MAN. Scarred for life.

*** ... Alright, so the bear is still pretty scary. But in this metaphor the bear is the book. DON'T JUDGE ME I need something caffeinated.

**** I'm just kidding. Obviously. I mean, who would ever brainstorm ideas THAT ridiculous?? *crumples up notes* *hides them in a corner*

***** And also to be reassured that we are not the only crazy ones with an experience like this...

International Sh*tty First Draft Week

2011-07-29T10:35:00.000-04:00

This week, the lovely Intern is hosting a series on, you guessed it, sh*tty first drafts (you can read Day 1 here). For days 1-4, she interviewed published authors about their own sh*tty first drafts. Because isn't it inspiring to know that even professional writers have sh*tty days? It means you can too!

Today, day 5 of the week, is the International Sh*tty First Drafts Contest! All you have to do to enter is post your own sh*tty first draft, and you could win fabulous prizes. In honor of this, I decided to post a truly horrendous example from my current WIP. This was originally the opening scene of the memoir. Cringe in horror! (it is seriously bad. fair warning):

Our lives are made up of a million stories. The anecdotes we tell our friends to make them laugh. The bad days we share to vent stress. The daydreams that occupy our spare time.

If you're a writer like me, there are the fantasies too. Imagined worlds where we can make anything happen, craft any story we want: realistic fiction, romance, science fiction, anything. But some days, like this one, writers get stuck. No new ideas, no gripping plotlines, no characters screaming at me to tell their stories. Some might call it writer's block. I think it's more like life block.

So today, I'm going to try something different. I'm going to tell my Story.

Everyone has a Story. It doesn't detail every event in your life; doesn't include every detail or best friend or meaningful relationship you've experienced. It's simply the most interesting tale you have. The one that makes the whole room fall silent when you tell it. When you're telling your Story and you pause to take a breath, all anyone says is "then what?"

You know the Story I mean.

Some people's Stories are about self-discovery. Religious awakenings or survival in unbearable circumstances or triumph over oppression, addiction, trauma.

Mine doesn't involve those things. Mine is a love story.

YAWN. WHAT A SNOOZEFEST, right? Like, wow past Ellen, can you blather on about inanities some more, without any actual scene or setting or context? Thanks. Also, way to be meta. "Here is a memoir about writing?" Wat.

So after I bit the bullet and scrapped that entire "scene" (for lack of a better term), here's my new opening:

The plane ride from Barcelona to London is the most frightening flight I have ever taken – and that includes three transatlantic journeys and one trip with Glasgow rugby fans, who jumped so hard that the plane shook during takeoff.

I wipe my damp palms on my sweatshirt for the hundredth time since I left my host mother’s house at 5 am. The middle-aged man beside me smiles kindly.

“Afraid of flying?” he asks.

I have been on dozens of planes since my first flight at 6 months of age, but that is a good excuse. A normal reason to be afraid. So I nod.

The last text message I received still plays on repeat in my head. See you soon. My stomach lurches again, the way it’s been doing all day, as if I’ve just dropped over the first hill of a roller coaster. I both love and hate that sensation.

For the first time in my life, I am about to meet the guy I've been in love with for four years.

How about you guys? Got any sh*tty first drafts of your own? Link me in the comments if you're doing the contest!

And speaking of contests -- you KNOW I couldn't end this post without a short plug: there's still a week left to enter the MG Fantasy giveaway, where you can win such treasures as a signed copy of Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver (author of Before I Fall and Delirium) or an ARC of Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock (author of Princess Ben and Dairy Queen).

Book of the Month & MG Fantasy Giveaways (RTW)

2011-07-27T12:42:00.006-04:00

Road Trip Wednesday is a "Blog Carnival," where YA Highway contributors post a weekly writing/reading-related question to answer.
This week's question was:

What was the best book you read in July?

Which worked out well, because today I was planning to start a middle-grade fantasy giveaway for a few of the best books I read in July! So STAY TUNED to WIN FREE BOOKS.

My very favorite of the month has to be Wisdom's Kiss, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock:

Wisdom's Kiss by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Princess Wisdom, known as Dizzy, longs for a life of adventure far beyond the staid old kingdom of Montagne.

Tips, a soldier, longs to keep his true life secret from his family.

Fortitude, an orphaned maid, longs only for Tips.

These three passionate souls might just attain their dreams while preserving Montagne from certain destruction, if only they can tolerate each other long enough to come up with a plan. Tough to save the world when you can't even be in the same room together.

Magic, cunning, and one very special cat join forces in this hilarious, extraordinary tale by the author of Dairy Queen and Princess Ben. An incredibly creative tale told with diaries, memoirs, encyclopedia entries, letters, biographies, even a stage play, all woven together into a grand adventure."

Having 8 different points-of-view, all told in various formats (to name a few: letters, a memoir, a play, and an encyclopedia) is pretty ambitious. Especially given the tons of first-person-present-tense books flooding the teen market right now (which is my favorite tense to write in too, don't get me wrong). But Catherine Murdock makes it WORK here.

I loved her first fairy-tale/fantasy novel, Princess Ben (set in the same world as Wisdom's Kiss, but in a different time period), but I enjoyed Wisdom's Kiss even more. With so many POVs going on, the characters all get voices of their own. You sympathize with all three members of the love triangle, another feat that's hard to pull off when there's heartbreak involved (and that's all I'm saying, don't want to spoil you!).

But best of all... it's HILARIOUS. This reminds me of Princess Bride or Terry Pratchett, with the crazy, goofy place-names, quirky country traditions and a little fun magic to top it all off. I also love that Catherine wasn't afraid to use big words in a book for teens. Yes, I might've stumbled across a few of those if I read this book at age 12, but it wouldn't have stopped me reading the book. It's one of those books you'd reread again 10 years later, and laugh even harder when you spot all the snark you missed the first time around. I think it would be fun to read this aloud to younger kids, too. There's a lot of room for making fun of the various voices (especially the narcissistic swordsman, Felis el Gato. How can you not love a book with a narrating character whose name is that ridiculous?!).

View all my reviews

You can win this book OR any of the following:

Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver (SIGNED COPY)
(read my review)

Villain School: Good Curses Evil by Stephanie Sanders

Janitors (Book 1) by Tyler Whitesides

and, although it's not fantasy or middle-grade, since no one won it last time, I'm throwing in We the Animals by Justin Torres as well!

How do you win? I'm so glad you asked! Here's the dealio:

Comment on this post in order to enter (be sure to mention which book you want to win, if you want a specific one!).

+1 if you follow this blog

+2 if you're already a follower

+1 for re-Tweeting this contest (Copy @egoodlett to let me know if you do!)

+2 for mentioning this contest on your blog

Winners will be drawn on Friday, August 5th (oh my god is it already almost August??), so hop to it!!

The Worst YA Opener Ever (AW July Blog Chain)

2011-07-23T11:11:00.000-04:00

This month's prompt: the Mini Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

The Mini Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest means trying to write the worst possible first line of a book or story in the spirit of Edward "It was a dark and stormy night..." Bulwer-Lytton.

This was hard. Not because it's hard to write awful purple prose, but because I cringed just thinking of horrible ideas for this. There were so many directions to go; so many genre-specific cliches I could explore. But I decided to stick to my personal favorite: young adult.

So here goes -- the WORST YA opener EVER (and apologies in advance, but I broke the "stick to 50-60 words rule." I figured that makes it worse):

I sat up with a jolt in bed, thinking that I had just been dreaming about something pretty wonderful involving the most gorgeous man in the world who also maybe had wings, when I heard Lynne shouting downstairs (I call my mother Lynne because calling parents Mom or Dad is SO passe and anyway how else would you know what her name is, which is totally important to the story?); so I forced myself to climb out of bed and stare into my bedside mirror, at my long, flowing, curly red hair and my bright emerald green eyes and pale, pale skin, and think: Goddamn, I am ugly.

Full confession: many of my early novels looked just like this. Except occasionally substitute red hair for electric blue.

Check out the other participants' blogs!

orion_mk3 - (link to this month's post)
AuburnAssassin
dolores haze
Horseflye
Proach
BigWords
jkellerford
xcomplex
Ralph Pines
Euclid
Diana Rajchel
pezie
Guardian
(me!)
Alpha Echo

Giveaway WINNERS! And also an Announcement

2011-07-22T10:19:00.002-04:00

Before I get to announcing the WINNERS OF SWAG from the Action/Adventure/Boy Book giveaway (I KNOW YOU ARE SO EXCITED), I just wanted to talk briefly about SCBWI.*

If you have never heard of the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, you should look into it. If you write children's books (picture books through young adult), you should definitely join. It's the single best thing I've done to further my writing career -- at the conferences I learned A TON about submissions and agents and editors and how to pitch people. Through their crit-group match program, I found an awesome critique group here in the city. Through recent meetings, I met two amazing YA writers (oh hai Corrie and Ghenet!) and ~~dragged~~ ~~bribed~~ invited them to join our crit-group too. But another great thing about SCBWI are the Work-In-Progress grants.

Yes, that's right. You apply for this grant, and you get a chance to win MONEYS toward finishing your novel. HOW AWESOME.

Plus, some great authors have won grants before, like the Contemporary YA Fiction grant, and gone on to fame and fortune (oh hai Jay Asher).

This year's winner was none other than my ever-fabulous crit-partner, Corrie Wachob!

WOOHOO!!! That is A BIG DEAL. Also, the novel she won it for, The Secret Keepers, is SUPER-FAB. You should go say congrats and stalk her** before she becomes famous and they ban that sort of thing.

AND NOW. *drumroll* ON TO THE WINNERS.

Thank you, random.org for selecting them! We had over 10 entries, so everyone has 2 chances to win!

First, the winner of Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick...

garridon!!!

Second, the winner of Shelter...

Doug Solter!!!

If both of you can email me your addresses (egoodlett(at)yahoo(dot)com), I'll get those shipped off ASAP!

To everyone else, THANK YOU for entering, and stay tuned for next week! I'll be giving away middle-grade fantasy (to appease that younger self you know you should let out of the closet more often).

* And by "briefly," I mean "prepare for a giant ramble," as usual.

** I mean stalk her BLOG. Not like... camp outside her apartment. Although she does have a very pretty stoop...

Random Reviews: We The Animals

2011-07-20T10:48:00.005-04:00

Firstly, I'd just like to mention that if 8 more people enter the Action/Adventure/Boy Book Giveaway, you can win this book!

And secondly, I'd like to mention that... well, it probably shouldn't be categorized as young adult. Or action/adventure (though there is action?). So OOPS. But in my defense there's not much info on the cover. Or something. Shush.

We the Animals: A novel by Justin Torres

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An exquisite, blistering debut novel

Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.

Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.

Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures.

Definitely an interesting, different read...

The story follows three brothers through their difficult, oftentimes violent childhood. The main character is a little softer than his older siblings, a little less angry and animalistic, so he was a good lens through which to view the story. But the ending becomes all his -- how he grows up, how the violence impacts him, and what it's like to be separated from his tribe, as he puts it.

I appreciated the way Justin Torres dealt with themes like abuse, poverty and familial struggles without making any one character come off as "the bad guy." You understand that the members of this family love one another deeply, even as they threaten to destroy each other. I also thought it was interesting the way the narration starts off in the beginning as mostly first-person plural. "We" do this, "we" do that. And over the course of the story it evolves into an "I."

It was well-written and engaging, with small, perfect details that almost made it feel like a memoir at times, rather than a novel. So kudos to Torres for getting the little details spot-on.

View all my reviews

And finally, to all of you writers out there, in case you haven't heard about it yet:

WriteOnCon, in conjunction with the Reading Room, are giving away $1,000.

Yeah, you heard me right. You can win ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS and also your own author page on the Reading Room, just by submitting the first 500 words of your (completed) novel here. (it's in an advert on the right-hand side when you click) (and ignore the part that says "pitch," because that confused me too. it's definitely just the first 500 words.)

Now you all have a good reason to finish those WIPs.

Too Weird Not to Share

2011-07-18T10:39:00.004-04:00

(My YA Adventure/Boy Books Giveaway is still going on all this week! We've reached 10 entries, so I will be giving away TWO BOOKS for sure! If more if you enter, I'll give away 3! Or more!
And if boys and action aren't your thing, keep an eye out for the middle-grade fantasy giveaway I'll be hosting next week!)

Okay, yes, I know that talking about my cats all the time makes me the BIGGEST WRITER CLICHE EVER. At least I live in a big city and not a cottage in the country with said cats? And also I don't get drunk and pen brilliant novels either. If I try to write while ~~drunk~~ even vaguely tipsy, it looks something like this:

I stared at the... ~~stared. Stared. STARED. That word looks weird when you read it enough times. Funny how words do that, right?~~
STAY ON TASK, ELLEN.
Okay.
Why am I typing all of my thoughts?
What was this scene about again?
OH GOD EVERYTHING I WRITE IS HORRIBLE.

So I'm not a complete cliche. Anyway. Back on track. My cats are insane.

I mean, not normal-cat-crazy. They are total weirdos. That's probably what I get for naming them after Harry Potter characters. One of which is a demon-thing.

But one of the weirdest things about them is how much they'll eat. I've had cats before. Cats like meat, and cheese, and sometimes milk or butter. That's all normal and good. My cats, however, eat more like dogs.

For example, this is Boggart and Tonks attacking my roommate for pasta:

Not that weird, you say? Some cats like red sauce, you say? Okay, well, here they are eating a FROZEN SOLID sweet potato French fry:

Still not impressed?

Cherry Poptarts. That's all I'm saying.

The End of an Era

2011-07-15T11:12:00.008-04:00

(quick plug - you've got until next Monday enter my giveaway to win free YA boy books from Harlan Coben, Joe Schreiber and more!)

Last night was it. The finale of the Harry Potter saga.

I still remember the first time I read the books. I was 12 years old -- they'd already been out for a couple of years, but I'd been avoiding them. See, by this point I was already reading adult fantasy (hello, lack of YA books back then), so I was pretty sure that such childish novels were beneath me. To boot, I had this friend who constantly ranted about them, in a way that made them sound like the most boring, cliche books in the universe:

"So like, there's this guy and he's a huge loser and gets beat up all the time, but then he learns he's really a WIZARD. And not just a wizard, but he's like, famous, and he's the chosen one or something, and so like, he has to battle this super bad villain guy, and he's going to school at the same time and there are like, some broomsticks and stuff?? You know???"

Yawn.

But that Christmas, when I came downstairs to find a pile of gifts under the tree, and more scattered about the room, I spotted them. A trio of illustrated covers wrapped in cellophane on the couch.

Okay, I thought. Since they're free. Guess I'll give them a shot.

That afternoon, as we drove to my cousins' house for more present un-wrapping and gift-giving, I opened one of them. As I've done with so many of my favorite series,* I accidentally tried to read the second one first. And even though I had no idea what was going on, the world sucked me in. Oh my gosh, there's a flying car, and there's some really hilarious twin kids cracking jokes, and...

Then I stopped myself. It took a huge effort, but I knew I had to wait and read the first book, you know, first.

The entire dinner at my aunt's house, I was spaced out. Imagining that flying car outside that little boy's window, and smiling at the weird British humor. That evening, I curled up in bed with book 1 and dove into the story for real.

I did not emerge again until 2 days later, gasping for breath, sleep-deprived, and completely in love. The next day, I started to read them all over again.

That first month, I think I read each book 4 or 5 times. Some people do this a lot, but not me. I almost never reread books, and certainly not multiple times within a couple of weeks. But every time I finished a Harry Potter book, I wanted to dive right back into that world. I wanted my Hogwarts acceptance letter, dang it!!! Hell, I'd settle for being an urchin in Diagon Alley.

That is some damn successful world-building, JKR.

Everything that happens in Harry's world, straight down to how Mrs. Weasley washes dishes and the money that Harry uses to buy his books, is insane. Unbelievable. Unrealistic. And yet Rowling treats all of it as normal -- almost mundane -- to the point where you start to believe it has to be real. How could she have invented all of these miniscule details? How could Hogwarts, which I can picture in my head more clearly than the grocery store down the street, not exist?

That is why these books have sold more copies worldwide than almost any other fantasy series in existence. People compare it to Twilight -- Twilight's 100 million sales are a drop in the bucket beside Harry Potter's nearly half a billion copies sold. Combine that with the movie sales; the amusement park; all of the merchandise... The franchise is insanely huge. And why?

I think it comes down to one simple reason. So many of us want to live in Harry's world.

I grew up on the Harry Potter series. After reading the first three together, I stood in line every release date at midnight (not at Barnes and Noble -- down the street at the grocery store, which was empty, so you could grab your copy and be out the door by 12:05). I did not sleep until I finished reading each new installment.

It's one of the only books that has made me laugh out loud. It's one of the only books that has made me cry. It's the ONLY book that has made me do both.

Whenever I'm in a rough spot, I still go back them as my comfort reads. Last summer I went through a tough patch, and I reread the whole series. For me, there is no better escapist read -- and sometimes escape from reality is just what you need. The books will always be there for us, as will the movies now.

But I still felt sad (and excited, and weirded out about how old I am) when last night, with the release of the last movie, the Harry Potter era ended.

Confession: I've never gone to a midnight release for these movies before. I just didn't love them as much as the books -- probably because movies are not books, but I always get irrationally angry at them for, you know, not being books. I mean, there's no possible way to cram all of the ambiance and meaning and tiny plot twists and plot points and foreshadowing into a 3 hour movie. There just isn't.

But I LOVED the Deathly Hallows Part 1 when I saw it. I felt like with this movie, they gave up on trying to explain all the nuance to the newcomers. If you haven't read the book, they said, you probably won't understand any of this anyway. So screw it. Here's a movie for the book-lovers.

Plus, this was the LAST MIDNIGHT RELEASE EVER for Harry Potter. Of course I had to go. And get decked out in my finest.

(&*^#$*^#*$ing Blogger isn't working today SURPRISE so pretend you can see this as a picture here)

That's right. RAVENCLAW REPRESENT. Also, you can't tell from this pic, but everything I am wearing from the waist up is Ravenclaw. I had a jacket and scarf in the Ravenclaw backpack too... IT'S NOT AN ADDICTION I SWEAR.

Also, we totally had the best snacks ever. I saved these from my Harry Potter World trip last February. BOO-YAH.

There is also a really brilliant picture of my roomie the Gryffindor and I dueling in front of the movie poster, but alas, that shall have to wait until Blogger revives itself.

In the meantime, check out how hot Bill is. WHYYYY didn't they put you in more of the movies, sir??

There were little things about this movie that annoyed me. Sub-plots they eliminated completely. Nuances they passed over. A couple scenes where they were a little blunt about stuff. But overall?

I AM IN LOVE.

And also, I saw it twice. Funny story. We had midnight tickets, but the my roomie's friend won some uber-special tickets to see it at 6:30pm instead, courtesy of Deutsche Bank, and there was free pop and stuff. So we went to that in the city, feeling super-cool, and then hurried back to our neighborhood for the midnight showing. YAY I AM SECRETLY ASLEEP RIGHT NOW.

One thing I found really interesting (and this is a slight spoiler if you have not read the books and somehow don't know how this ends):

BOTH theaters clapped when Mrs. Weasley kills Bellatrix and when Neville kills Nagini.

Not when Voldemort dies.

I found this really awesome, for some reason. And also. NEVILLE IS A BAMF.

* Seriously, I don't know why this happens. I always do it. I read Elvenblood before Elvenbane in that series; I read Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart before the first book in the Firekeeper series; I accidentally started to read The Two Towers before I got confused and went back to Fellowship of the Ring... Clearly I just don't pay attention to the giant "SEQUEL" on the covers or something.

Action/Adventure YA Boy Books Giveaway!!

2011-07-13T10:32:00.002-04:00

Since I stocked up on so many lovely ARCs at BEA, I think it's about time I started giving some of them away!!!

I've got a serious truckload of books here, so I'm going to be giving them away by theme/genre/weird-categories-into-which-I-decided-to-sort-them. This week's category is ACTION/ADVENTURE (also incorporating Thrillers) with BOYS AS THE MAIN CHARACTERS. Because we all know that YA can be a little short on DUDE NARRATORS at times.

Also, I'm going to be doing this giveaway a little differently. Here's how it works:

If less than 10 people enter, I will give away book number ONE to one of those people.
If more than 10 people enter, I will give away book numbers ONE AND TWO to two of those people (one each).
If more than 20 people enter, I will give away book numbers ONE, TWO AND THREE to three of those people.
And so on and so forth.

I don't expect a ton of people to enter, so I will only announce the first 3 book giveaways for now. But as the time draws closer, if we get close to or more than 20 entries, I will announce the magical book 4, and so on. Basically, if you don't like the first three books on here, but you like some of the other books you know I've stockpiled, drag all of your friends here to enter, and you could unlock a better one!! Or if you just want more chances to win, drag your friends here for more giveaways!

Without further ado, HERE ARE THE BOOKS ON OFFER THIS WEEK:

Book Number 1 (which I will be giving away no matter how many people enter!):

From Goodreads:

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
View all my reviews

Perry Stormaire is a normal high school senior– he is busy applying to college and rehearsing with his band –until he agrees to go to the prom with the Lithuanian exchange student who is staying with his family. It turns out that Gobi Zaksauskas is not the mousy teenager that she seems but rather an attractive, confident trained assassin. Instead of going to the prom, Perry finds himself on a wild ride through the streets of New York City as Gobi commandeers the Jaguar his father lent him for the prom in order to take out her targets. Perry learns a lot about himself – and ends up with some amazing material for his college application essays.

(Read my review here)

Book Number 2 (which I will give away if 10 people or more enter):

From Goodreads:

Shelter by Harlan Coben

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
View all my reviews

Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged uncle Myron and switch high schools.

A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For a while, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving - until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl isn't who she claimed to be. And neither was Mickey's father. Soon, Mickey learns about a conspiracy so shocking that it makes high school drama seem like a luxury - and leaves him questioning everything about the life he thought he knew.

First introduced to readers in Harlan Coben's latest adult novel, Live Wire, Mickey Bolitar is as quick-witted and clever as his uncle Myron, and eager to go to any length to save the people he cares about. With this new series, Coben introduces an entirely new generation of fans to the masterful plotting and wry humor that have made him an award-winning, internationally bestselling, and beloved author.

Book Number 3 (which I will give away if there are more than 20 entries):

From Goodreads:

We the Animals: A novel by Justin Torres

View all my reviews

An exquisite, blistering debut novel

Three brothers tear their way through childhood— smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.

Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.

Written in magical language with unforgettable images, this is a stunning exploration of the viscerally charged landscape of growing up, how deeply we are formed by our earliest bonds, and how we are ultimately propelled at escape velocity toward our futures.

DON'T WORRY if we don't reach enough entries to unlock them all! There will be other chances to win them throughout the summer. Expect MANY MORE giveaways in the near future!

Rules for entry are simple:

Step #1: Follow this blog. (if you don't already, that is!)
Step #2: Post here.

What should you post about? Well, it can be anything, but to make it exciting, why not post about the most ACTIONY/ADVENTURESOME/THRILLING thing you've ever done! Don't worry, it can be as heart-stopping as petting a large dog for the first time (LISTEN THEY ARE SCARY WITH THE BIG TEETH OKAY). Just post anything you found really scary but secretly exciting!

For example: I road the SkyCoaster at Kennywood. Yep, it's 300 feet in the air. And the only thing holding you onto that bungee cord is a rather flimsy-looking cloth Velcro thing. You get pulled slowly backwards up to the top (all the while with my friend whispering ohf***ohf***ohf*** in my ear faster than I have ever heard anyone swear in terror before), and at the apex, you have to pull the string to release yourself. Which in our terror we were unable to do. So then this little recording voice in our ear was all "YOU FAIL so we will drop you anyway, 3, 2, 1, bye" and then... for the first few seconds, it didn't feel like falling. It felt like flying.
Until the bungee cord kicked in and pulled us into a swing. Then it just felt like being on a really gigantic swing.
Okay, there's my action-adventure. What's yours?

EDITED TO ADD: duh, forgot an end-date. This contest will run until next Friday (July 22nd)!

Why I Should Never Be Allowed Out in Public

2011-07-11T10:05:00.001-04:00

Things I do at fancy publishing parties:

Spend 10 minutes pitching an interested editor by telling her why agents rejected my last novel. WHAT. WORST IDEA EVER.
Accidentally imply that the premise of very-nice-person-I-just-met's book is overdone.*
Forget to eat beforehand and get giggly after 1 glass of wine.
Awkwardly try not to pitch agents so as not to put them off, then get flustered when they ask what I write and forget the one-sentence pitch I wrote and memorized months ago just on the off chance that this ever happened. Babble inanely instead.

Things I do when meeting new male friends/people on subways:

Accidentally imply I am a lesbian**
Start babbling about books
Start babbling about books that teenagers read
Start ranting about how there are not enough POC or LGBTQ teens in said books that teenagers read
Get into an argument about genre vs. literary and how I think they both have their merits and STOP TRYING TO LOOK PRETENTIOUS BECAUSE YOU ONLY READ "CLASSICS"***

Things I do at work parties:

Accidentally imply I am married****
Eat all of the food that everyone else is politely not touching
Attempt to converse with my boss's boss's boss while my mouth is full of said food (why do people always say hello when you are right in the middle of scarfing a huge chunk of hummus or something?!)
Never know when is the proper moment to shake hands with new coworkers, and thus accidentally appear to snub a lot of them
Forget what the name of a waffle iron is, and spend a full minute trying to excitedly explain that it's the hot thingy you put batter into and waffles come out
Talk about my cats. Way too much*****
Rant some more about YA and how it's totally justified as a genre. Stare vacantly when people ask about the non-fiction books my department actually publishes

Things I say whenever small children are anywhere within a 20-foot vicinity:

()#$&(@$&(#*@*(&(@!#)!&#(!&*@)!@&$(!@$(&!$(&@$(!!!
Swearing attracts them. Like magnets. I swear it's not my fault (##*(@ it.

* And I do mean accidentally. Because often they do have a great premise, related to a subject we don't see in YA enough. I do not know, MY MOUTH JUST MOVES AND BAD THINGS HAPPEN.

** Which would be totally cool if I was a lesbian, but unfortunately, I like guys. And then they think I do not. Oops.
Also, by "imply I am a lesbian," I don't mean that I do... lesbian-y things... because those don't exist, boo stereotypes.
I mean, I say "girlfriend" all the time (in the old lady way, meaning like, my friends who are girls, but) and then I have this weird problem where I constantly refer to my ex as "my former partner" because I can't figure out what term to denominate him by, but then partner sounds like... well... yeah.

*** Also, FYI, Dan Brown is not a "classic." He is genre. STUFF IT.

**** Maybe it's because my roomie and I have a joint-hyphenated last-name household according to our cats' adoption certs. And we adopted cats together... And she brings lunches to my office when I forget them.

***** I have become one of THOSE cat owners. You know. The crazy ones that smell like cabbage and have 15 cats and talk to them more than humans...

The People Hath Spoken

2011-07-08T09:35:00.005-04:00

I'm back! Ish! From a long weekend in Rhode Island and a long week of frantically attempting to catch up with the work that piled up in my absence.

My trip was a glorious, sun-filled experience, wherein Technogoddess, her faithful sidekick and I discovered many of the important Rhode Island must-see sites! Including, but not limited to:

What is probably the car from Deathproof! (complete with duct-taped doors and rolls of duct tape for cup-holders. and spray-painted interior decor)

The largest mixed-drink ever! Aptly named the Godzilla. Don't worry, I had help conquering this beast.

Melting Pot. If you have never been, locate one near you. IMMEDIATELY. Best 4-course fondue dinner you'll ever eat. And totally worth the jacked-up prices, I swear.

There were also about 800 pictures from the ghost tour we went on, because I was hoping to catch something weird on film. I will spare you those. Mostly because they're still on Technogoddess's sidekick's camera, which I do not have access to. Cough.

In other news, the long-standing poll wherein I badgered you all to help me decide what to write next because I am supremely indecisive has closed! The results are on the sidebar.
Verrrryyyyy interesting.... For most of the time, the steampunk story about assassins was far in the lead... But at the last minute, a slew of votes for the horror story about a ghost hunter gave us a tie! So clearly I'm not the only indecisive one. I feel better now. ;)
Also, contemporary ideas were not so popular. Hmm...

Random Reviews: Divergent

2011-07-06T09:53:00.000-04:00

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series—dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

LOVE this book so hard. Not gonna lie, I stayed up until 2 in the morning on a school/work night to finish. I hit page 420 or so and couldn't stop.

I enjoyed that the MC, Tris, was different from the usual "I'm an uber-badass girl, mwahaha." We were given reasons for her toughness. There were consequences if she was not tough. There were consequences BECAUSE she was so tough. She made mistakes and did bad things, and did not always have goody-two-shoes regret over it.

I liked that. I didn't always like "her," but the story is addictive enough, and you have enough attachment to her voice that I felt like that was a good thing. It made her feel real. Because let's face it, in real life, we don't always agree with other people or their choices. But we can still care about them.

There were a couple parts near the very end where I lost some of the character motivation... I wasn't sure exactly "why" she did certain things (won't say what, so as not to spoil!), especially when it seemed like there were other, less extreme options available.

But in the end, I found this a fast-paced, well-plotted, addictive read. Definitely recommend it to any dystopian fans!

View all my reviews

Dude, it's 4th of July

2011-07-04T10:58:00.001-04:00

I am not here. You probably aren't either. I am sipping drinks poolside up in Rhode Island with my girl Technogoddess. YEAH.
But in honor of the 4th of July, I would like to briefly rant about something (YAY rants, right?!).
I am USian.
Yes, I know we have shitty politicians. We are not the most socially-conscientious country in the history of the world. As a whole, our country has mad issues.
But you know what I am getting sick of? People who constantly bitch about USians as a whole, and how we are so prejudiced.
UM, HI, referring to ALL US-IANS EVERYWHERE with your (insert derogatory complaint about our intelligence/global-citizenship here) IS PRETTY MUCH THE DEFINITION OF PREJUDICED.
I don't judge you because you are French, or Spanish, or British, or Italian, or Argentinian, or (insert any other nationality here)*. So don't judge me because I am from the United States.
Because no, I am not geographically challenged. I am not an idiot. I do pay attention to GLOBAL news. I do recycle. I do care about the environment. I do not pee in public when I'm drunk. I do respect other cultures, and I do try my best to speak the language of the foreign country I'm in.**
And you know what? I have met plenty of Europeans who thought that Florida was next to Maine, or who made fun of me for not knowing the intricacies of their country's politics, when all they knew about U.S. politics was that "Bush sucks." Or who pee in public when drunk.
We all have our flaws. Our nationality does not inherently give us these flaws. We give them to ourselves.
Happy Independence Day to the other USians out there!
And to everyone else, if you write about country-specific celebratory days on your blog, please link me! I love learning about new ~~excuses to party~~ holidays!

* Actually, I will probably think it's awesome and follow you around asking questions about growing up wherever you're from, until you are so sick of me you want to kick me in the head. So... Okay, granted, I can see why that's annoying. ahem.

** I don't always speak it well, but I try... That counts, right?

How I Wish I Could Pitch My Memoir

2011-07-01T14:44:00.002-04:00

Dear Agent'sNameHere,

I'm writing to you because (reasons agent seems awesome).

(kickass summary that is yet-to-be-written.)

I hope you would enjoy reading my book, less than three. Yes, okay, it's a memoir STOP DON'T RUN AWAY. I swear it has a plot.
Read page 1, that's all. F(&*$ summaries.
All the best,

(my signature)

Have a great 4th of July weekend!! Don't drink (too much!) ;)

Blast from the Past

2011-06-29T11:36:00.001-04:00

As I revise my memoir, I find myself looking through a lot of older photos. Mostly for inspiration, to place myself more fully in the time and place I'm writing about.
Some of these pictures I'd completely forgotten about. The things I chose to photograph catch me by surprise all over again.
Here's one such image. This is the view from the highest point in Park Güell, designed by Antoni Gaudí, Barcelona's most famous architect (and therefore a huge tourist draw):

This picture captures the Catalan spirit so well. Art, rebellion, and a stupid tourist joke.

Marketing Strategies for Your Book

2011-06-27T10:15:00.001-04:00

First, a disclaimer. I market non-fiction, super-~~stodgy~~cutting-edge, ~~boring~~ informative science books (*bats eyes at boss-man*). The handy thing about marketing non-fiction is that you have a built-in audience:

What is the book about? If it's about trees, sell to foresters. If it's about fish, sell to aquaculturists, zoologists, marine enthusiasts, etc. You get the idea.

But I'm betting most of you, like me, write fiction (or creative non-fiction OHAI MEMOIR). And you're probably thinking "Audience? I WISH."

I feel your pain. You have maybe a couple hundred Twitter followers if you're lucky, and barely over 100 blog followers (COUGH). You probably have more Facebook friends, but they're all, you know, actual friends who you don't want to spam with promotions.

BUT. I guarantee your book still has a super-specific audience.

FOR EXAMPLE. Amazon is the best illustration of this (sigh. I know, they are taking over the world. But they're just so damn GOOD at it). When you buy, say, the Hunger Games on Amazon, you are added to this mysterious ethereal list. The list says "HEY. This person likes to read dystopian fiction."

So when a big publishing house buys a new dystopian, like, say, Glow (which btw, I have a sekrit copy of to give away soon ;) ), the pub house can pay Amazon $$$ to send a mass email to all the people on that list of dystopian-readers. Wooo, targeted emails! Best thing evar.

How can you make this strategy work for you, you ask? First, think about WHO your audience would be. Is your book a fantasy for teens? Is your book about prom queens? Is your book about college computer nerds?

Once you have a set audience in mind, think about where your audience hangs out. For example, college computer nerds are probably all over the internet. They probably keep a blog. Or maybe hanging out on forums like 4chan?

Google is your friend. Comment on blogs related to your audience, or run by members of your audience. Talk to them, ask about what their interests are, before you jump right in with your pitch. Ask if you can work WITH them -- maybe in exchange for a small fee they'd host an advertisement about your book on their site. Or maybe you can send them free copies to review, if they keep a book review blog. Contact administrators of the forums where they hang out to ask about advertising opportunities.

Smaller forums and blogs probably won't charge as much as the huge sites like Amazon and Google for ads. Plus, they'll reach a selected, targeted audience.

Or you can ask the forum owners if they'd be willing to sell you their member list. Ask bloggers if they have a newsletter, and if they could mention your book in it, or rent you their email list. Targeted email lists are a great thing to collect. Don't spam it, obviously, but sending one or two emails a year about your new book can generate some huge results.

You can also look for book clubs ads in your area. Try to find one that reads books in your genre. Contact them and ask if they'd like you to give an author interview. Ask book clubs outside your area about Skype interviews. If you start off with free interviews and speaking arrangements, you can work your way up to paid deals.

Be creative with it. Have fun. Don't think of it as a chore -- think of it as connecting to new readers. New friends, even. Your publishing house (if you have one) is going to do its best to help your book succeed, but at the end of the day, nobody loves your book more than you do. So spread that love around!

The Dangers of Twitter

2011-06-24T09:49:00.001-04:00

Twitter is great! Twitter is fun! Twitter is easy-to-use and practical for writers!

There are all kinds of nifty things on Twitter, such as these 60+ great hashtags for writers! And agents with advice, or editors with advice.

Twitter is like a giant chat room with loads of cool people and friends with the same interests as you! What could be bad about Twitter?

Well, that very chat-room-esque feel can be dangerous. The "microblogging" format of Twitter feels more like a conversation than a blog. You @reply friends and join #hashtag chats on your favorite topics. As you get to know your new friends, you become comfortable around them. You start to open up.

This is all great. Until you forget you're on the internet. In a public forum. Which saves a record of everything you Tweet.

So when your friend George rants about how much he hates his agent, and you reply telling him zomg, yours totally sucks too, she just took 3 months to read your novel... Well, guess what? If your agent looks at your homepage (or even Google-searches her name and your Twitter hashtag), chances are she's going to see that comment. And I'm guessing she will not be very amused that you're dissing her in public.

This is just a random imaginary example off the top of my head, but you get the idea. It's dangerous to forget you're posting online. You might agree wholeheartedly with a complaint your friend posted about their boss so-and-so, but do yourself a favor and PM your response.

And when you're tempted to do some complaining yourself, stop and think for a moment. Is this the kind of rant you want to put online, for anyone in the world (including many people who do not know you or your brand of sarcasm/humor) to see? Or is this the kind of thing you should email your friends to bitch about?

Trust me. I have almost made some bad mistakes myself (ohai glass of wine + heated Twitter hashtag chat).

Stay classy, lovies!

Tagged!

2011-06-23T10:23:00.000-04:00

Got tagged by Sophia in one of these meme-things. Never done one on a blog before (only bored my Facebook friends with them), sooo... this might suck! Feel free to skip this if you're easily bored.

Do you think you're hot?

Depends on the day, to be honest. You know how it is. One morning you look in the mirror and you're like DAMN WHO IS THAT SEXY FOX. And then the next day you're like OMG AM I FROM A HORROR MOVIE WHO IS THAT ALIEN BEAST.

Upload a picture of the wallpaper you are using at the moment.

Well, I'm using that "architect" background on Windows 7... And I dunno how to save that image, so... here's a picture of my desktop?

Oh yeah, I blotted out the worky bits. You know, so you can't figure out my TOP SEKRIT SUPER-SRS JOB. I am a spy, actually.
... crap, I wasn't supposed to tell you that! look over here.... *prepares a flashy thing*

When was the last time you ate chicken meat?

Um... Probably the chicken noodle soup I had for lunch over the weekend? Funnily enough, I tend to eat mostly beef or lunchmeats at work, and then eat like a vegetarian at home (MEAT IS EXPENSIVE OKAY. Also my cats eat it all anyway).

List the songs you listened to recently.

Blame my Pandora. It's practically the only thing I listen to now...

Disturbed - Ten Thousand Fists
Linkin Park - What I've Done
Christina Aguilera - Bionic

Yeah, my Pandora is weird...

What were you thinking as you were doing this?

I AM SO BEHIND AT WORK. I have all these flyers to make, and like, angry editors will chase me with pitchforks soon... Also, CURRENT EDITS, THEY SUCK. Trying to solidify plot arc of memoir, yet somehow I am turning it into something more resembling soup.
Also, the cat just barfed, and roomie called in a panic, so probably he is dying. IDK. We are like old ladies, with our cats. MY PRECIOUSSSS.

Do you have nicknames?

My roomie's mom calls me "Ellie Mannelli"? Ever since my mom explained that she changed her last name (Mannella) to my dad's (Goodlett) only after I was born, because she was in a waiting room and the nurse called for "Ellen Mannella" and my mom was like OH GOD CRINGE.

Tag eight Blogger friends.

1.Corrie
2.Linda
3.Aheila
4.Melanie
5.Sophia
6.Ari
7.Lee
8.Angelica

Who's listed at number 1?
My crit-partner! She's my partner-in-writerly-crime. Loves!

Say something about number 5.
Sophia forced me to do this bloody quiz! *shakes fist* ... Okay, so not "forced" but, I'll blame her anyway! Also, she's fun to gab with on Twitter.

How did you get to know number 3?
I've talked to her a few times through AbsoluteWrite, but I expect to talk to her much more soon, since she won my manuscript critique giveaway contest! (and writes steampunk. So excite to read!)

How about number 4?
Melanie has the most beautiful blog template ever! I noticed her blog on the YA section of AW, and we started commenting back and forth :)

Leave a message for number 6.
ARI YOU ROCK. Seriously, I love your blog, and every time people complain to me about YA being so boring and white-washed, I'm like GO HERE for mad awesome book recs!
... And then sometimes even when they don't complain about this, I complain for them, and then tell them to go here... *coughs*

Leave a lovey-dovey message for number 2.
Lindaaaa, you have superfun Teaser Tuesdays, and I love your book reviews in between! Plus your comments always make me smile, and your profile pic is adorable, btw. Has anyone mentioned this before? ABSOLUTE TRUTH. loves!

Do number 7 and number 8 have any similarities?
Theyyyy both write YA, and have fun blogs to stalk, and their posts make me smile... So, yes! They have some similarities :)

Mwahaha. Now you all have to do this! Or else you shall invoke the wrath of the tag-monster, and he will eat your blog! Or... do whatever those chain-letter demons are supposed to do. Demand payment in the form of a first-born child or something...

Thick Skin

2011-06-22T10:22:00.003-04:00

The morning after I submitted my very first manuscript (super-awful btw) to my very first editor (who later was very nice about her rejection) at a FOR-REAL publishing house (heart-attack), I received an email from my super-awesome professor (who writes YA herself). She said: "Now comes the hard part. You need to grow some thick skin."

She told me that I would face lots and lots of rejection in the future. Rejection from agents, rejection from editors, rejection from friends who didn't like my manuscript, rejection from reviewers if I ever published a novel. She warned me not to let it get to me.

I looked up at my boyfriend at the time, who had been reading the email over my shoulder. He raised an eyebrow at me and said, "I don't think your skin needs to be any thicker."

Some people might be offended by this comment. But I knew what he meant. I get annoyed/angered just like the next person. However, I'm pretty hard to upset. Plus, as several friends and family members have pointed out to me in the past, "You're so stubborn, I can't picture you not achieving what you want."

Thanks, I think?

But the truth is, even us thick-skinned people get hurt. No matter how thick it is, it's still only skin. We are not made of steel.

Sometimes it's the sharp pains that reach you. A sudden loss or change. But other times it's the pains that build slowly, the ones you've convinced yourself you don't mind. Like a growing pile of rejections for your last novel, the one you were so sure was ready. Or when you go through one, two, four rounds of revisions with an agent, only to have them regrettably need to pass.

OF COURSE that hurts. But sometimes you feel like there's something wrong with you for hurting. You know it isn't the agent's fault. You know your writing has gotten better and better and better with every rejection, every revision suggestion, every painful learning experience. So you wonder why it still gets to you.

The simple reason is: you're human. Constant rejection will get to anyone eventually. Yes, you can tell yourself to ignore it; forget it; learn from it; keep writing anyway. But you also have to take care of your feelings. If you get five rejections in a two-day period, you don't have to sit down at the computer and start editing your novel for the 100th time. You can if that makes you feel better -- but if you're anything like me, it just makes your edits panicky and confused.

Take a day off. Hell, take a whole weekend off! Hang out with your friends. Eat chocolate. Go to the beach. Film your goofy cats attacking your roomie's pasta. Watch inspirational videos. My personal fave?

Susan Boyle's first audition.

(still gets me every time!)

Most importantly: DON'T DOUBT YOURSELF.

And remember, at times like these, it helps to have all of those friends and family members and former boyfriends to remind you that you are stubborn as hell. You are thick-skinned. Rejections won't stop you forever. And you can write, damnit.

/end motivational speech

Make a Difference Giveaway!!

2011-06-21T11:02:00.003-04:00

So last week, in a bid to make some NY State Senators wake the hell up, I offered to give away free books if you called and/or emailed them about Marriage Equality.

Lawmakers still have not decided, when last I heard, so feel free to call or email (email addresses and suggested template for your message can be found here) if you haven't already!

I would do my hat thing again, but I've been crazy busy this week, so I'm going to be lazy and random.org this one, sorry!

The prize, you ask?

Well, I went through my list of BEA swag, and realized... None of these books have LGBTQ main characters. None of them even have secondary characters, that I've found yet. This is a rant for another blog. But, I decided, I should give away a book that matches the contest.

So! The winner will receive a BRAND-NEW copy, mailed straight from Amazon to your doorstep (sorry, I know Amazon is a bit boo, but I couldn't figure out how to do IndieBound if I don't know your address yet... Sadface):

Ash, by Malinda Lo!

This one has been on my to-read list for a while (so if you win, you simply MUST let me know how it is!!), and from all accounts it looks fab.

Okay! Without further rambling and ado-ing! The winner, by random drawing, iiiiis:

....
......
.......
.........
(inserts drum rolls)
.........
.......
......
....

SAMANTHA!

Email me to claim your prize!! And thank you soooo much for helping to make a difference. Thanks to ALL OF YOU. You guys ROCK.

LOVE!

Why You Keep Using That Word?

2011-06-20T09:22:00.002-04:00

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Some examples?

Then =/= Than

Then is a measure of time. As in, "First I did this, then I did that" (after the first thing). Or "Back then I was awesome" (as in, back during a certain time period).

Than is a comparison. "Becky is so much hotter than Amy." Or, "I would rather die than admit we're related" (this one might be trickier to see, but it's still a comparison. You are comparing the merits of death to the merits of admitting your relation to someone).

Your =/= You're

Your is a possessive form. Your car. Your beehive. Your insistance upon using incorrect grammar. Etc.

You're is a contraction of the words "you" and "are." For example, "You are annoying" becomes "You're annoying." If you're (see, you are?) about to type the word "you're," think about whether you could say "you are" in its place. For example, "You're car" does not work, because when you say "You are car," it makes no sense.*

Good =/= Well

Good is an adjective. When someone asks how you're doing, you would say, "I'm good," because you are a noun, and adjectives modify nouns. You'd also say "the car is good" or "the food is good" or "that movie was so good."

Well is an adverb. Adverbs modify verbs (cause they're "ad"ded on to "verbs." Ha!**). "Well done!" you would say, because "done" is a verb, and "well" is explaining how it was done. "You drive well" is also correct, because you're saying that the person is accomplished at performing the verb -- in this case, driving.

Further =/= Farther

Farther refers to physical distance. "I ran farther than Tim today!" Pretty simple.

Further refers to mysterious figurative distances. For example, "If we take this argument any further, I will strangle you with your bootstrap."

Can =/= May

Can is an indication of ability. Can I go to the bathroom? No, I had my bladder removed last week, so I physically cannot!***

May is a request for permission. May I go to the bathroom? No, you may not, because your teacher is a sadist. You'll have to stay here and wet your pants.***

* Unless you're trying to tell someone they're a car. But even then, you'd need "the" or "a" to make "You are a car" grammatically correct.

** I am so punderful. Someone stop me.

*** Granted, usage of Can vs. May has been changing lately. "May" appears frequently in places where we traditionally would have seen "might" in the past. Check out Grammar Girl for more details.
She also notes that it's now accepted to use "can" when you're speaking in an informal setting. So your YA teens would probably say "Can I go to the bathroom?" instead (unless they are super-formal). This gets into more linguistic territory than strictly grammar, however.****

**** Linguistic territory, btw, is awesome, because it covers what we ACTUALLY say, not what we are supposed to say. I shall rant about that some other day!

P.S. - will be giving away books for the Marriage Equality post tomorrow, so stay tuned!

AW: June 2011 Blog Chain

2011-06-17T09:58:00.001-04:00

(FYI, the NY state senate still have not come to an agreement on the proposed Marriage Equality bill. There's still time to make a difference. Read my last post to find out what you can do to help.)

Anyway! I've skipped out on these blog-chains for a few months, so I was having withdrawals! I joined AbsoluteWrite's June Blog Chain to assuage them.

This month, the prompt is Setting the Scene.
So here goes. This one's an excerpt from my current WIP, (less than three):

You do not need a time capsule to visit the 1300s. You just need to visit York.

We stand in the Shambles at dusk, listening to our tour guide spin his first tale. For the first time since we’ve been together, my eyes are not fixed on John. I stare at the buildings around us, the streets underfoot, every piece of this setting. The Shambles make up the oldest part of town. The tiny, close streets that have been the city center at least since 1086. Most of its current buildings are from the late 1300s and early 1400s. Ruts in the cobblestones show where horses dragged carts down this road for centuries. No cars could fit down the Shambles now, except maybe a Smart Car.

Overhead, two houses on opposite sides of the street lean so close together that they almost form a roof. You could stand in the upstairs window of one and shake hands with your neighbor.

The guide walks down the street and we follow, over the smooth-worn, mismatched stones, past the fourteenth-century church, with its melting glass windows, and into the city square. Toward a distant grass hill, atop which sits a huge white tower. The castle keep. A shiver runs down my spine before the guide even begins his next story.

I have an active imagination. I am good at picturing myself in other places, other worlds or time periods. It’s a requirement for a writer.

Here in York, I don’t even need to try. I am walking down medieval streets. Where I stand, Roman soldiers once built a capital city. Angles conquered that city. Vikings routed the town and created their own settlement. William the Conqueror quelled the northern rebellion here. Major battles in the English Civil War that John’s always talking about happened on these very streets.

“I see what you meant about this city,” I whisper to him.

Check out the other chain participants' blogs here!

orion_mk3
juniper
LadyMage
dolores haze
jkellerford
Ralph Pines
TheMindKiller
AuburnAssassin
pezie
WildScribe
Inkstrokes
Irissel
Guardian
Lyra Jean
egoodlett (ME!)
cwachob (the lovely crit-partner!)
xcomplex
Della Odell
Aheïla

MAKE A DIFFERENCE in Marriage Equality!

2011-06-16T12:43:00.002-04:00

THERE ARE BRIBES AT THE END OF THIS POST. justsaying.

If you're reading this, you are probably a writer (or a big reader). So you've got a powerful imagination.

Close your eyes and imagine you're in love. Imagine you've been in love with that person for years. You work as a couple. You want to spend the rest of your lives together. You're 100% sure that this is the love of your life.

Now imagine your country, a country that claims to uphold freedom and equality and the separation of church and state, has told you that you are not allowed to marry the love of your life. Ever. You will be denied the rights that other couples have. You will be excluded from your partner's health care benefits. You won't be allowed to visit them in the hospital during surgery, because you aren't a relative or a spouse.

You are not ALLOWED to love this person.

How pissed off are you now? I hope you're as angry as I am that our country has STILL allowed injustices like this to carry on.

But GUESS WHAT? Today YOU can make a difference. New York State only needs ONE MORE VOTE (JUST ONE) to pass the Marriage Equality Bill that would allow same-sex couples to wed in this state. YOU CAN MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

There are several undecided senators. Click here for the full list, along with telephone numbers and contact details.

All you have to do is call and say two sentences. "I am calling to support Marriage Equality. My name is ___." That's it.

And if you're afraid of phones (it's okay, I was too, for a very long time. Fine, maybe I still have issues ordering food from new delivery places, and I make my roomies call instead... cough), I'll make it even easier for you. Here are their emails:

gball@nysenate.gov,
fuschill@senate.state.ny.us,
hannon@nysenate.gov,
lanza@senate.state.ny.us,
little@nysenate.gov,
grisanti@nysenate.gov,
saland@nysenate.gov,
flanagan@senate.state.ny.us

Copy and paste this into an email, and write something like this (or copy this exactly):

Dear Senator,
I urge you to support Marriage Equality.

There must be equal rights under the law. Anything else is discrimination.

Thank you for your support.
Best,

YourName

(if you're feeling ambitious, you can separate the emails out and address each one to the senators personally. Their names are listed here).

THAT IS ALL YOU HAVE TO DO.

And also, if you do it, post here in the comments. Either let me know that you called, or post the receipt of email you received from the senators' inboxes. Everyone who does will be entered in a SUPERCOOL CONTEST for FREE BOOKS.

I haven't decided which free books yet. But I have a lot saved up. Or maybe I'll even give more than one away if lots of people enter. Or Barnes and Noble gift cards. WHO KNOWS.

Anyway, enough bribing. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE go email or call the senators.

Don't Look Up the Mountain

2011-06-15T09:30:00.002-04:00

(We interrupt your regularly programmed posts to bring you this announcement:
NY State is SO CLOSE to stopping marriage discrimination against same sex couples. Call Senator Andrew Lanza today to help. All you have to do is give your name and say you support Marriage Equality. That's it. No arguing or defense necessary. Basically he just needs to hear that most people do support this.
Number is (718) 984-4073, and you don't have to be a NY resident. PLEASE HELP.
Okay anyway, back to blogging!)

I went to my friend's ordination at the New Seminary (interfaith church of awesome, basically) last Sunday. There were some great speakers from all walks of faith, and it was so cool to hear prayers and songs from many religions side-by-side.

But one speaker in particular caught my attention.

She was co-president of the 2011 class, and along with my friend, a newly ordained Reverend. At the start of her speech, she mentioned that she is one of the youngest graduates in 2011. She wasn't sure what advice she could offer the other grads, most of whom have had more life experiences than her.

But then she remembered something her father told her.

Before she started classes at the seminary, when she was just finishing college, she started to panic about what she'd do with her life. She had all these exams and final projects, and on top of that she had no idea what she was planning to do with the Bachelor's degree she worked so hard to earn. She had no new goals, no set purpose in her life, no idea where to go.

Her dad took her by the shoulders and said, "Don't look up the mountain."

Don't worry about your ultimate goal. Don't worry about how impossibly far away it looks right now, or wonder how you'll ever reach it. Don't worry about anything but the present moment. Placing one foot in front of the other as you climb. Keep climbing, keep striving, but don't stop to look up the mountain.

This struck me as such a perfect metaphor for writing. We get this brilliant idea, and we envision the finished novel in our head, and it is fantastic. But then we start to write, and it becomes a muddled mess, and we wonder how the hell we're ever going to fix the 8 million problems it already has, and how we'll ever finish the rest of it when we only wrote 200 words today, and we're tempted to call it quits and just go watch X-Men marathons instead.

We have to remember: "Don't look up the mountain."

Focus on what you can do today. What you can solve. And then do it. Write one scene. Fix that one paragraph. If that's all you do today, that's fine. You'll fix something else tomorrow, until eventually you'll look up, and realize there are no more rocks to climb beneath your feet. And when you do look up, you'll already be at the top of the mountain.

Teaser Tuesday: less than three

2011-06-14T14:47:00.004-04:00

Time for another tease! From my current WIP, (less than three). Before you ask: yes, this is a memoir. And yes, there are vampires. Also, I swear I am not crazy:

Subject: Re: Clan Meeting
In CapadocianRowdyPub@yahoogroups.com, “Rena” wrote…
January 26, 2004 1:29 AM

Capadocious Clan Hall. RavenBlack City.

At first glance, the room I walk into could be any public auditorium in any city. But this isn't any city. Take a closer look around the audience and you'll see. The Rowdy Pub's bartender, dressed in a black leotard and pink tutu, adjusts the string of teeth around her neck. The old man who leads the Warriors' House pops a beer can with an axe the size of most humans' thighs. Beside him, the Thieves' House captain sports full Robin Hood attire, but with a 9mm Glock holstered in place of the bow and arrow.

If you were to step outside this room, you'd find the city to be a similar mosh-pit of styles. This spotlight-flooded auditorium sits inside an authentic 13th century castle. A traditional English pub butts up against its battlements. Down the road stands a glass-and-metal skyscraper, across the street from a dilapidated church whose entrance burns with eternal flames.

Me, I could care less for the pretentious outfits and the gaudy buildings. I get it. You're compensating for something. Or you claim to be 500+ years old and stuck in your ways. Whatever. Old jeans and a tank top are far more comfortable than fourteenth century body armor. Not to mention cooler.

I sit in the back of the room, farthest I could get from the massive fireplace on the left wall. Add that to the body heat in the room from fifty recently-fed attendees awaiting this speech, and I feel like I'm practically sitting in an inferno. But then, anything warmer than freezing feels hot to me. Sensitive skin.

The idiot gullible enough to invite me to this trusted-clan-leaders-only shindig waves to me from across the room. I pretend not to notice. He's served his purpose: first class ticket to the good shit.

In about one minute, Capadocious will take the stage and tell us about his war preparations.

About damn time I caught a break. I've been playing good-little-student in this clan for weeks now and not learned anything more exciting than how best to strike when someone attacks you from behind.

See, in RavenBlack City, you have three types. The good ones, who feel all guilty about our "condition" as they call it. The bad ones, who believe we're meant to rule the world and throw lots of bloody bathhouse parties. Then you have the ones who straight don't give a fuck.

Guess which category I fall into?

Adjectives/Adverbs

2011-06-13T10:51:00.001-04:00

The dreaded Ad-words. Bane of a writer's existence. In case you did not have this drilled into your earlobes by professors like mine in college: They're bad.

"But why?" you ask. "They look so pretty and shiny on the page!"

NO! Do not let them tempt you! Adjectives and adverbs are like these guys. Adverbs especially. They're all, "I'm so delicious! Like amphibian candy! You should nom upon me!"

But then you do, and you're like, "so young! with so many regrets! I ded."

Don't let the ad-words poison you! 99% of the time, they are either extraneous, or just adverbs disguising a spot where you need a better verb. Or they just make no sense. But I'll get to that option last.

First! The more common.

Problem 1. Extraneous Adjectives/Adverbs.

Symptoms of this problem: You used your thesaurus... and wrote down every word you found in the sentence.
You couldn't decide between your favorite words, so you just put them all down.
You feel like your verb just needs a little extra descriptor to give him more oomph.

How to fix it: Reread and cut-cut-cut. When in doubt, chop it out.

Examples:
"Damn, that chick is ~~gorgeously~~ hot." (it is the same thing.)
"My fluffy, fuzzy-wuzzy, cuddly bear." (pick one. only one.)
"I slowly shuffled." (really? I shuffle very fast...)
"We yelled loudly." (same deal. how else would you yell?)
"She closely scrutinized." (great verb! but then you killed it with "closely." why god, why?)

Problem 2. Adverbs Cloaking Weak Verbs.

Symptoms of this problem: You really love "to be."
Your thesaurus is broken.
You aren't really sure what a thesaurus is.
You have these favorite words that just seem to pop out whenever you aren't looking, no matter how many times you tell them to STAY AWAY.*

How to fix it: Find the perfect verb. Instead of "look at," why not scrutinize? But be careful to LEAVE THAT VERB ALONE once you find it. Or you will loop back to problem #1.

Examples:
"He ~~moved rapidly~~." Ran/raced/hurried/sprinted. Take your pick.
"He ~~anxiously waited~~." Fretted/paced/wrung his fingers/freaked the hell out.
"He ~~timidly looked~~." Peeked/peered/squinted/glanced.
"He ~~creepily smiled~~." Grinned/leered/smirked/ogled.

Problem 3. Nonsensical/Just Plain Weird Adjectives/Adverbs.

Symptoms of this problem: You think the ad-word combo you've just come up with is the most speshul unique snowflake in the world.
You have not stopped to think too much about how much sense your combination makes. But that doesn't matter, right? It's your story! It doesn't have to make sense to you!

How to fix this problem: Hand your MS to a beta reader/neighbor/friend/parent/cat. If they have a confused look on their face when they hit your ad-word combo, then you should probably kill it. With fire.

Examples:
"The shiny gray carpet." (has your carpet been covered in shoe polish? no? then WHY IS IT SHINY.**)
"She auspiciously attended the meeting."
"The water suddenly ebbed."
"He slowly ran toward her."
"I garishly pondered."***

* *raises hand* guilty.

** If you are Captain Tightpants, feel free to ignore this comment. And by that, I mean -- if "shiny" signifies something else in the world of your novel, fine. Otherwise, wtf mate?

*** HOW DO YOU EVEN?! This is my personal fave weirdest. And by fave, of course, I mean Kill It With Fire.

Ellen Explains Everything: Advice from Yours Truly

2011-06-10T10:14:00.002-04:00

My hometown newspaper is looking for a new advice columnist. They were accepting written or video submissions. You had to answer a sample prompt question. I decided to use my brand-new MacBook (LOVE IT)* and record my answer. Because that just seemed more fun.
So here goes! My first (and possibly only, since I hear there's some stiff competition for this spot) advice column:**

* Also, may I just add how nice it is to have a computer again, after 3 months of sharing with my roomie? Love to roomie, but I am a computer addict. Also, it is hard to write on a Linux machine with no MS Word program. SIGH.

** Also, our responses had to be under 60 seconds. Do you have any idea how HARD that was for me?! ... Not that I talk a lot...

Language: The Building Block of Society

2011-06-08T11:06:00.000-04:00

I was ~~procrastinating~~ hanging out on Facebook the other day when I stumbled across a link to news coverage of the SlutWalks protests. In case you haven't followed this event, a brief recap:

The "slutwalks" are marches being held in reaction to a statement a Toronto police officer issued, in which he says, "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimised."

Just retyping that sentence made me so angry I had to stop for a moment to compose myself. Ahem. This is the WORST kind of victim-blaming possible. It's equivalent to saying "dear gentlemen, it's your fault you were mugged and shot, because you were wearing a suit and tie. Obviously you were advertising your wealth." I could write an entire post about how completely flawed and ass-backwards and short-sighted and DESTRUCTIVE statements like that officer's are.

But! That is not the point of my post today. So I will attempt not to stray off-track.

I was perusing Facebook when I found this link, which a friend had posted to his wall. One of his friends, in turn, had left a comment. His comment was, "Never understood why people get offended by words in general. They're just stupid fucking words."

Now, I know, "sticks and stones may break my bones..." But in fact, I think words are more dangerous than sticks and stones. Another friend commented with his input:

"Words are the most powerful thing the human race has. Without them, we'd still be shivering with fear in our caves, just another prey animal. Words convey ideas, but some carry 40,000 years of baggage with them. The wrong word can start a war. In this case, it was using a word to label someone pejoratively and make them responsible for the misdeeds of another."

There weren't enough Like buttons for me to agree with this statement enough, hence this post. When you get down to basics, we're just primates. What separated us from our cousins hanging out in the forest all those millennia ago?

The evolution of language. Our ability to communicate. You could argue that we have superior brainpower or whatnot, but if we could not communicate the way we do, we could never have collaborated to build the powerful society we have.

Other animals have communication systems. Some, like dolphins, bonobos and parrots, are rather advanced. But none of them* go beyond the speech-level of a human toddler. If we were limited to our three-year-old vocabulary, syntax and speech patterns our whole lives, how on Earth would Newton have explained gravity to his fellow scientists? Even if Ben Franklin had figured out how electricity worked, how would he have convinced the great minds of his day that running around in a thunderstorm flying a kite was not, in fact, a symptom of insanity?

Language brought us where we are today.

Words are powerful.

Words are dangerous.

Choose yours carefully.

* That we have yet identified

Teaser Tuesday: less than three

2011-06-07T09:26:00.004-04:00

This is a scary Tuesday for me. Not only have I not teased in a while, but I'm almost afraid to post the teaser from this memoir. First of all, it's a memoir. WHO WRITES THOSE!?

Unless you are like, Jeannette Walls or Rachel Simon*, chances are your life is probably not interesting enough to be a BOOK.

Maybe it could be a short story. Or maybe bits and pieces make good campfire storytelling, or make your friends laugh hysterically over the water cooler. But it's probably not a cohesive plot. Your life, like everyone's, is a random series of disconnected events.

HOWEVER. Sometimes, something happens that does lend itself to a story. Sometimes tiny pieces of our lives have a plot, and it's the kind of plot that keeps your friends asking "and then what happened?" late into the night.

... I like to think I might have this kind of story. I'm not really sure. But obviously I cared enough to write the whole thing. So... We'll see.

At any rate, time for me to stop rambling and clarifying things, and just tease already. Here's an excerpt from my memoir, < 3 (less than three)**:

SNIPPED!

* btw, her first novel (I ALMOST SAID FICTION NOVEL OMG FOR SHAME) The Story of a Beautiful Girl just hit the NYT Bestseller list. Check out her fantastic post about celebrating here!

** also, while you're here, is that title too weird? I mean, I know the artist formerly known as Prince got away with a symbol for a name, and considering how much the internet works into this story, that and the pun on "less than three" makes it a perfect title I think, but... it is a bit odd. like this whole project. SIGH. angst. etc. :P***

*** Also, I tried to make the little heart thing (you know, with the less than sign, and then the 3), but Blogger appears to not like this. It thinks it is some kind of html code, which I failed to write, so it just makes it invisible. SIGH. But anyway. Imagine there is a little heart before that title. ahem.

Memoir Writing

2011-06-06T11:23:00.003-04:00

(I know everyone in the world is talking about #YAsaves today, in rebuttal to a horribly annoying Wall Street Journal post that I won't link to because if you have no read it, then you won't be as pissed off this Monday. But everyone has already offered rebuttals, much more poignantly than I could. So I'd just like to add: Hells yeah, YA. Ahem. Anyway!)

I might have mentioned this in my most recent post, but I'll say it again: Memoir writing is soooo different from fiction.
Fiction is like knitting a scarf. You start with one or two threads, a couple needles, and a bunch of air. Then you knit those threads together, fold them back over themselves, tie them together, pull them tight throughout the plot, until you have a novel.

Maybe a multicolored, crazy-looking novel with some fringe on either end -- one that needed some really complex stitching -- but a novel nonetheless!
Memoir writing, on the other hand, is a different beast altogether. You start with everything. A million memories, some more meaningful to you personally than others. But only a very small percentage of those memories are relevant to the story you're about to write.*
Yes, memoir writing is more like weaving on a loom.

It makes you look at memoirs and think "Wow, that's lovely, HOW THE F*** DID THEY DO THAT?!?" It takes a hundred strings from all over your life, and ties them together into one cohesive piece. One story, out of the thousands of stories that make up your whole history.
If it looks hard, believe me: it's even harder than it looks. I am normally pretty good at continuity*** from scene-to-scene. When I revise novels, I need to look for plenty of issues, but dropped story-lines typically isn't one of them. I don't have my MC encounter conflict and then forget to resolve it.
Apparently, in memoir writing, this is a HUGE PROBLEM for me. I write one scene about thinking about breaking up with a guy, and then in the next scene, I am dating someone else. OOPS, FORGOT TO CONNECT THE DOTS.
It's interesting, because the scenes I avoid the most are the ones I find hardest to write. No one wants to talk about how they were a douche to someone. Or how they screwed up, and lied, and messed up their life and other people's. No one wants to admit their mistakes, much less in their life story.
But without the mistakes, it's not a story at all. In fiction writing, I make my narrator suffer as much as possible, because that's where the story resides. In the struggle. In the fight for life, for freedom, for whatever the MC wants or needs.
I need to learn to do this in my memoir. I need to make character-me suffer. Because that's where the story lies.
It's just a liiittle harder to do when it's "you" on the page!

* Assuming, of course, that you know the plot of your memoir, the point you want to make, your theme. Otherwise, you'll just be vomiting random funny/interesting stories onto the page. Which is fun for you, but other people probably won't care.**
** Trust me, I have tried this. Thank you dear memoir professor for being blunt when my gorgeous, poignant, moving memory-scenes were totally irrelevant to the story I was trying to tell <3
*** Aside from occasionally forgetting what shoe my narrator took off, or if the MC is still wearing the coat they had on three scenes ago.

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick

2011-06-04T12:00:00.001-04:00

Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick by Joe Schreiber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was SUCH a fun read. Especially for the boys. I mean, Lithuanian exchange student comes to live in your house, you think she's a total nerd until your parents force you to take her to prom, and then you find out she's a sexy badass assassin?

Some of the action required a little suspension of disbelief, and the girl was a bit one-dimensional/Mary Sue-esque (ok, we get it, you're basically a superhero with one tiny flaw that occasionally makes you helpless), but yaknow, considering how many cardboard cutout sexyboys we have in YA, I guess turnabout's fair play.

Overall, I could picture this unfolding just like an action movie. Made for a superfun summer read (too bad it won't be out until November I think? SADNESS). But I like my action, so... :D

View all my reviews

2011 Moby Awards

2011-06-03T09:14:00.005-04:00

I feel so literary today!

After my critique group's usual Thursday meeting last night, my kickass crit-partner-in-crime announced that she heard about this happenin' event, the 2011 Moby Awards,* hosted by Melville House Publishing. It's an award show for the best and worst book trailers of the year. Sounds SUPERCOOL, right?!

Also, she said there would be free wine.

So I was totally in.

We arrived at the chic warehouse-turned-bookstore in Dumbo,** secured our first glasses of free wine, and settled onto some concrete block stadium seating for the show.

Among the award winners:

Ghostgirl won most annoying soundtrack (I am sure you can hear why)

It's a Book! Won the "what are we doing to our kids?" award (teehee. THIS IS HELPING OUR KIDS!):

The Savages, by Don Winslow, won "worst big house trailer" (and also was totes my favorite of the night):

And Gary Shteyngart (who I had never heard of, but whose books I now MUST READ, even if just because he somehow convinced James Franco to be in his video?) won the Grand Jury award, aka the award they gave him because otherwise he'd win all of the things.***

For a full list of winners, check here. Personally, I wish they had showed all of the nominees as well as the winning trailers, because some of them sounded interesting. Also, I wish Jonathan Safran Foer had been there to accept the "best small house trailer" award. Because then I could ~~stalk~~ MEET him! Apparently he had something better to do with his night though. PFFT.

AND crit-partner and I think they should add a YA category. Just think of all the hilarious fodder to add to the pile! The only YA I noticed that made an appearance was the winner of the "most angelic angel falling to earth"**** award, which went to Lauren Kate's Torment:

(THOSE WINGS. did you buy them at Hot Topic? because I am totes sure I have that same pair in black...)

In case you aren't scared enough, check out the video that won for "most monkey sex"*****

After the awards and some mingling (wherein we seemed to meet at least half the staff of Electric Literature -- WAY TO REPRESENT, you guys! ... is your office like a block away or something?), crit-partner-in-crime and I ~~stole one more glass of free wine~~ headed for sustenance at a nearby Mexican place.

NOMNOM fajitas.

In other news. Total posterfail on the subway ride home:

LULZ it's funny cause it's June now.
In conclusion: Stay classy, my friends. Also, don't drink lots of free wine when you have work the next morning and your train plans to break down for 45 mins in the middle of Chinatown. wheeeee.

* Crit-partner knows about all the happenin' events because she lives in Brooklyn. In order to move to Brooklyn, you must first pass a 5-page exam testing your knowledge of artsy/hipster/underground events with not much publicity. You must also be skilled at locating new such events, and wear skinny jeans.
Truestory.

** Which apparently stands for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" for all of you non-hip non-Brooklynites (coughmecough). It is cool because large subway trains pass overhead every 10 minutes or so and make the windows rattle. I am sure the soundproofing companies score big bucks at the apartments down there.

*** Also, the "awards" themselves were tiny Beluga whales (apparently they couldn't find sperm whales, like good ol' Moby Dick, so they figured these were close enough) from a toy store, spray-painted gold.

**** According to Melville House Publisher Dennis Johnson (who looked rather haggard as he gave this introduction speech), "angels falling to earth and banging humans" was a theme of the year. From the hundreds of trailers he watched. Poor man.

***** But to be fair, it is called Bonobo Handshake, so really, WHAT WERE YOU EXPECTING?! ... do I hang out with Bio majors too much? is the whole Bonobos-love-to-bang-all-the-time thing not common knowledge?

Extraneous Words

2011-06-01T10:55:00.002-04:00

Words are powerful. But some words tend to be weaker than others. Some crawl into your WIP and wreak havoc, tempting you with their flashy outfits and cute shoes, and you think it's okay to give into their lures and include them. Resist!
In my experience, 80% of the time these buggers crop up, you can chop them with no harm done. In fact, it will make your writing crisper! And speaking of "in fact," here's my front-list of overused words and phrases:

in fact
apparently
obviously
suddenly
now
well
hmm/ahh/ohh/(other sound-type words)
actually
surely
so
as (guilty as charged on this one...)
of course
finally
a bit
a little
very
really
I mean
most -ly words (those pesky adverbs)
there is/was/has been, it is/was/has been, and all those other passive-voice type structures. actually, make that any "to be" verbs in general

And I'm sure there are more. Like "I'm sure," for example. And maybe "like." And... Anyone else got some to add to the list?

World's Largest Cat?

2011-05-30T12:17:00.000-04:00

Whilst browsing through record shops in SoHo, I may have stumbled across the World's Largest Cat...

What's that, you say? It doesn't look so large in this photo? Probably because my body is blocking his bulk. Allow me to zoom in:

I included my hand for size-comparison.
When he stood up and stretched, he reached from my hips to the middle of my chest. And I am not a short girl. Meep. >.>
It's official. Cats will soon take over the world. Hope you're nice to your kittehfaces, everyone...

BLOG CONTEST RESULTS!

2011-05-28T15:41:00.003-04:00

Watch to find out the winner!! And note the steampunk hat. oh yes. I did not lie, y/y?
Thanks again to everyone who entered! You guys rawk. <3

p.s. - sorry for the delay! we had some technical difficulties... anyway!

Last Chance!

2011-05-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

I will be closing entries for the 100-follower-celebration contest tonight(Friday, May 27th) at 11:59 p.m. EST. If by some chance you have not heard me spam Twitter and the blog about this event already, here's the dealio:

Comment here to win (bonus points for re-Tweeting @egoodlett) a FULL manuscript critique from me.

You can redeem the winning crit whenever you want. So whether you have a finished MS sitting on your desk, or you plan to have one done by summer's end, enter away!

Be sure to check back HERE tomorrow morning (hopefully sooner rather than later, but it depends when I can badger one of the roomies into filming me picking the name from my hat) to see WHO WINS! dun dun dunnnn. Very exciting. Be excited. :)

BEA Recap

2011-05-26T10:28:00.008-04:00

(P.S. - er, can I call this a pre-script? Whatever! My win-a-manuscript-crit contest will be closing TOMORROW NIGHT, so last chance to enter! DO IT! we almost have 20 entries! I love round numbers! anyway!)

For those of you who haven't heard about it before, BookExpo America is North America's largest publishing conference, held once a year in New York City. Every major publisher, and most of the minor ones, have booths at the fair, where they promote their big upcoming titles for the year to come, and push their recent backlist.

In other words? They give away lots and lots of books. ARCs (advance read copies), galleys, and remainders (super-cheap backlist you can buy for around $2). Basically, it's Book Lover's Paradise.

And this year, I scored a ticket! So yesterday, along with my roomie and my intrepid crit-partner, I stocked up on tote bags (insider tip: McGraw-Hill give away the best tote bags. Double-pocketed, huge, and complete with zipper. Take note, other companies!) and hit the exhibition floor running.

By the time noon rolled around, we had collected so many books we could barely lift the tote bags (oops, overexcitement?). Then we moved on to the author signing booths (more free books, but signed this time!).

Some highlights of the day?

Meeting Flavor Flave

as he promoted his new book (Flavor). Also, Flavor Flave gave us some champagne, w00t.
(which might be why I look deranged? not sure. other roomie tells me I must work on my meeting-celebrities-face. apparently I always go weird. which reminds me of this really funny story, when I met Scott Westerfeld, which I will not tell you now, because it was too embarrassing! har.)

Illuminated manuscripts from a gorgeous hand-painted, hand-bound art publisher:

(their print-runs are only a 500-800 copies, never to be reprinted. Prices start around 10 grand. YIKE. but if I were rich? totally worth it!)

Watching Melissa Marr, Ellen Hopkins and Melissa de la Cruz talk about making the transition from YA to writing adult novels:

which was pretty interesting. Ellen Hopkins said it was actually her editor who suggested the shift, as her last couple books really pushed the limit of upper-YA. All three of them agreed that they did not plan to write either YA or adult books -- they just wrote the stories that occured to them.

Melissa Marr also mentioned that when she was on tour for Wicked Lovely, a surprising number of her fans were college students or young professionals/working adults. Not in high school anymore. This made me kind of want to leap up in the audience and shout OMG PLEASE WRITE SOME NEW ADULT BOOKS. cough. I resisted, clearly...

But of course, the best highlight of all... Dude, check out how much swag I scored*:

What's that you say? Meh? Not that impressive? Here's the contents of those totes:

39 books in total. 35 lbs (I weighed them. Because my shoulders hurt so much).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, before you accuse me of bragging too much,** this is good news for you too! Because it means I'm stocked up on plenty of ARC-goodness to give away to YOU, dear readers! :D

Some highlights of the pile?

The Future of Us - Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler (OMG SO EXCITE TO READ)
The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater (SIGNED)
Blood Wounds - Beth Pfeffer
Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor
Glow - Amy Kathleen Ryan
Liesel & Po - Lauren Olivier's new middle-grade novel (SIGNED)
(not an ARC, but) Delerium - Lauren Olivier (SIGNED)
Wisdom's Kiss - Catherine Gilbert Murdoch
Shelter - Harlan Coben's YA novel (SIGNED)
Between - Jessica Warman
The Beginning of After - Jennifer Castle (SIGNED)
You Are My Only - Beth Kephart (SIGNED)
Legend - Marie Lu (SIGNED)
Janitors - Tyler Whitesides (MG)

EXCITEMENT. Ok, first I gotta read these. And possibly force some friends to read. And tease you with more teasy reviews (which won't be spoilery I PROMISE). But THEN! Expect sparkly giveaway excitement, weeee!

* These are just the books I brought home. Not counting crit-partner or roomie's spoils of war.

** ok, I admit it, I'm bragging a little. I've wanted to go to this show foreeeeverrrrr!!! and everyone else always made me jealous! so turnabout is fair play! or something!

From Novel to Memoir

2011-05-25T10:02:00.000-04:00

I've been writing novels for a long time. I know I'm pretty young (comparatively*), but I wrote my first novel when I was 11. And I don't mean "novel" as in long short story that at the time seemed to count as a novel. I mean that handwritten, it took up two of those 100-leaf (so 200-page) wide-rule composition notebooks, plus a few extra pages on a yellow legal pad.

Really, novels are my one true writerly love. I've written a few short stories along the way, but they do not inspire me with the same passion. I admire short story writers (Jhumpa Lahiri and Neil Gaiman in particular). It's just not the format for me.

When I was 12, I wrote the sequel to my first novel. It probably would have been just as long as the first if I didn't lose the composition notebook I'd already filled with writing, then give up on the project out of despair (this was before I learned that when you rewrite things, they turn out better than the first draft anyway).

When I was 14, I wrote what I like to call my first "real" novel. This was shortly after I discovered the word processor on Dad's computer, and I spent day after day typing up my handwritten notes into the system.** When I finished, I had a 350-some page fantasy novel about Atlantis (I will only say this: it involved unicorn-riders. Versus evil dragon-riders from Mu. As you can imagine, it was FANTASTIC *cough*).

I spent the next three or four years reading and rereading this novel, trying to edit it. I wrote a couple other projects in between -- mostly short stories for classes, and a couple novella-length pieces.

When I finally gave up on that novel and wrote my next one, I was a junior in college. That's when I really hit my stride. I wrote 3 more novels over the next 4 years, each stronger than the last.

Which brings me to today.

I have one futuristic YA novel that I'm hoping will find home with an agent somewhere so it can go out on sub. I honestly believe this is my first project that could make it. I think (maybe optimistically) that it is good enough to be published (and it's taken me years of perspective to be able to say that my past attempts were not ready).

So what now?

I tried to write another novel. I bounced around 3-4 ideas, each one more high-concept than the next. The problem was, none of those ideas grabbed me. I wrote ten, twenty, forty pages here and there. None of them cried KEEP GOING.

I should mention that back in sophomore year of college, I took a memoir-writing class. I got an idea for a memoir based on the online vampire game I used to play, and a long-term relationship that emerged from the game. Over the years I've written literally*** hundreds of drafts of that story. I have restarted it over and over and over again.

Memoir writing just isn't for me, I concluded after probably the 150th try.

But a couple months ago, 4 years after I attempted the first draft, I felt ready to write it. I sat down and started again.**** This time, I kept going.

Past page 20, where I stopped 70% of the times before.

Past page 50, where I stopped 25% of the times before.

And finally, past page 75, where I stopped the very few times I thought I was almost ready to write this.

I kept writing. And now, a month and a half after I began to rewrite this project, the first draft is finished. It stands at 83k words (longer than any of my YA novels) and 250 pages in MS Word.

I still have to face revisions. Memoir writing is a hell of a lot different from writing fiction, and I know I've got a lot to learn. Fixes to implement, storylines to flesh out, characters to clarify.

But the first draft is (finally) finished. I have a good feeling about this. I still love novels, of course, and have plans to start a new one soon. But I've got to admit, memoir is a pretty cool format too...

So here's to writing something new!

P.S. - Just for kicks, an old photo that inspired a scene toward the end of the memoir:

* Although the fact that my little bro is going to be a junior in college next year makes me feel disproportionately OLD...

** There was a dramatic incident where my dad contracted a virus and reset the computer without asking if I had anything that needed saving, and I lost the entire novel I'd typed -- which made me profusely thankful that I still had the handwritten pages to start from. But at least it taught me to ALWAYS. BACK. UP. EVERYTHING.

*** No, I am not exaggerating. I literally mean over 100. I have saved proof.

**** and P.S. - it is super-intimidating to restart a project for the 151st time...

Babies in YA. Necessary?

2011-05-23T10:26:00.004-04:00

This is a trend I've been noticing often lately. Maybe I'm just more attuned to it now because people in my age group have started to reproduce (OMG WHEN DID WE GET SO OLD). But there are a lot of very popular YA series that end with the characters spawning. Just to name a few super-big players out there:

Harry Potter (ughhh the epilogue)
Twilight (ughhh the whole last book... and the whole series. but that's another story)
Hunger Games (ughhh the epilogue again)

< edit: fair warning, I got a little spoilery in the comments. so if you haven't read any of these... um. close your eyes? SOWWY >

I understand what the authors wanted to do. Tie up all the loose ends in the story, let us know that the characters make it alright in the end. The easiest way to show us happily-ever-after seems to be by popping some offspring in there.

But... this kind of bothers me. Why do the characters need to push out kids in order to be happy? Why can't we have a nice, cheerful ending without flash-forwarding to show us what cute babies they make together?

Why is the reproduction necessary?

Don't get me wrong, I like kids. Maybe someday I'll even have my own. I have considered this. But not any time soon. Not for a loooong time. And most of my friends feel the same way. Some of them don't want to have children ever. And I see nothing wrong with that.

I know plenty of strong adult women with no children who are living successful, fulfilling lives without breeding. They will still leave behind great contributions to the world, and can still find true love and live happily ever after.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having/wanting/making babies. If you want them when you're young, when you're old, or at all, that's great! Obviously it's a wonderful, amazing, life-changing thing for most people. I'm just saying, why can't some of the huge YA series include some characters, specifically female ones, who DON'T want kids?* (especially if they set up the MC the entire time as a girl who will never want to have children, and then suddenly in the epilogue are like OWAITJK *coughHungerGamescough*).

And even if those characters do want kids, do we need to include it in the YA epilogue? I can't have been the only teen who was srsly freaked out by the idea of spawn. And pregnancy. And those videos they made us watch in sex ed...**

* Of course, I have to include a disclaimer here: Kristin Cashore rocks my world, because she does do this. And there are probably other authors out there, but I'm just not remembering them right now. Or maybe I haven't read them. Comment if you think of recs?

** Because that's immediately where my mind goes when I read these epilogues. It's a dark place. Just saying. Not that I have PTSD or anything.

P.S. - There's still time to win a free MS critique! < /shamelessplug >

On Formatting Dialogue

2011-05-20T14:39:00.000-04:00

(pre-post note: if you haven't yet, enter here to win a free full manuscript critique from yours truly!)

I have noticed a recurring issue lately: confusion regarding dialogue formatting.

Your formatting and punctation don't have to be perfect before you submit a novel to your agent/editor, but they should be as close as you can possibly make them. Correct formatting and neat copy-editing makes your writing look more professional, which is always a good thing. Plus, if you've sold your novel to a publishing house, your copy-editor will love you for it.

So, some quick tips:

1) Paragraph breaks.
When a new character starts to speak, you need a paragraph break. "Are you sure?" you ask, scratching your head. You think to yourself, surely if there's a whole paragraph-worth of interior thoughts or action between the two quotes, you won't need to break paragraphs when you switch to a new character's speech. "I am very sure," I reply. "Otherwise it would just be confusing to the reader. Like this!"

Also, if you start a new paragraph within dialogue, you do not add an end quote to the last sentence. Then you start the new paragraph with another beginning quote.

"For example, say I'm telling you a long, lengthy story, and imagine that there were several more sentences before this one. By now, my current paragraph is getting quite long. I should really break and move to a new one, even though this character is not finish speaking.

"It should end up looking like this when I create the next paragraph."

2) Quotation marks.
How do you use them? Which ones? Where? In normal dialogue, when a character speaks, you enclose it with double-quotation marks. "Like this." However, if you have one character quoting another one, you use single-quotation marks inside of double-quotations. "So, say I'm telling you a story about my friend Jorge. Jorge was running from a three-eyed purple monster. 'Help me!' he shouted. It would look like that."

If you want to get really technical, if you're quoting a character who's quoting another character who's quoting someone else, you'd use double-quotations inside the single-quotations inside the outermost double-quotations. But if you're writing something that convoluted, generally proper punctuation is the least of your worries.

3) Dialogue tags.
Formatting tips first: commas generally lead into or out of dialogue in the event that you have a dialogue-tag. She said, "Really? I didn't know that!"

"It's true," he replied.

Seem pretty straightforward so far? Well, it gets a bit confusing if you don't know what constitutes a dialogue tag. Any verb that denotes speech (say, yell, scream, shout, hollar, ask, reply, etc.) can be a dialogue tag. Although I'd recommend staying away from the weird ones. "Why's that?" Henry pontificated. Just sounds a bit weird. "Say" is my usual favorite. It's near-invisible to the reader, and thus it doesn't interrupt the narrative, the way "pondered aloud" might.

HOWEVER. Other actions =/= dialogue tags.

"I can't believe that's true," she ran past him toward the ballot box.

NO. The action of running is a separate sentence.

You don't need to have a dialogue tag every time. In fact, often your dialogue works better without one! But please separate it accordingly. The above sentence should look like this:

"I can't believe that's true." She ran past him toward the ballot box.

ALSO. "Laugh" is not a speech verb. You would sound really insane if you tried to laugh out words. Just try it. "Here we are," I laughed. Out loud, this sounds more like "h-ha-ere-ha-we-haha-areha." If your character is an insane asylum escapee, feel free to ignore this comment.

4) Punctuation.
Pretty simple. If your dialogue would end with a period, but you're adding a speech tag, use a comma instead. "Like in all the other examples throughout this post," I say.

But! If you're ending the quote in anything other than a period, such as a question mark, it should look like this:

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"I am!" he yelled.

Keep the first word of the tag lower-case.

5) Elipses.
Elipses are a powerful tool. Use them wisely. And by wisely, I mean SPARINGLY. This is coming from experience... I have a problem... It's kind of an addiction... Ahem. Anyway. IF you must succumb to the use of an elipses, remember: There are ONLY 3 periods in them. I think back in the old days (going by some vaguely repressed memory from Catholic school), if an elipses was at the end of a sentence, they said you should have 4 periods, whereas if it was in the middle, only 3 were needed. But this is no longer the case.

3 periods only! No matter where the elipses appears! So when... your character... is gasping for breath... We'll figure out by the lower case letters what's a mid-sentence break, and what elipses come at the end of a sentence...

6) Contractions.
This is more a stylistic thing than strictly a formatting rule, but I just have to say - WE SPEAK IN CONTRACTIONS. 90% of the time, when a character is talking, they'll say "I'll" or "we'll" or "we're" or "I'm" or "it's." Not "it is" or "they will" or "I shall" or "we are." If your character lives in a more formal era, or was raised by a nun in a sheltered convent or something, fine, they have a reason to speak really formally. Otherwise? It just looks weird! And not natural! The key of dialogue is to sound as natural as possible.

7) Word Repetition.
Again, more stylistic than a strict rule, but you don't need to repeat words as much as you think! When people talk in real life, yes, we repeat ourselves often. However, in writing, you want every line your characters say to move the story forward, move the scene forward, or reveal something new about the character's personality/past/ideals/whatnot. Your characters don't need to say "well" "ah" "okay" or "now" before each sentence for it to sound realistic. The occasional "well" or "okay" is all well and good. But it can start to annoy the reader if you lead-in to dialogue with too many unnecessary words like that.

Alright, that's enough ranting from me for the day! In case I haven't pimped it enough yet, please enter my contest! :)

ZOMG 100 FOLLOWERS & A Contest!!!

2011-05-19T10:11:00.005-04:00

Thank you SOOO much guys!!! I was inordinately excited to hit the big 1-0-0 this morning... okiamkindofsadsometimes. shush. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!? I must have a giveaway!
I was trying to think of awesome prizes, like all these books I could give away... But then I was like, wait, I'm saving those for a SEKRIT PROJECT (to be revealed soonish), and also half my bookshelf is currently checked out with friends (I am a library. In case you didn't know).
SO ANYWAY. I was pondering, and utilizing way too many capital letters in my excitement, when it hit me. This is something I get emailed questions about semi-frequently from my blog, so might be something people want?
I'm offering...
(drumroll)

A manuscript read and critique! From yours truly!

Ok, before you say "pffft" (cause I know there are actual fiction house editors and agents and published authors and other kickass people who give away crits), I'm offering a FULL read! No matter how long your MS! You heard me!*

I don't want to make this super complicated. I know people are always like "do 20 million things for bonus points in my contest!" and it gets annoying. Blah. Comment here with your name (and maybe some other nice things if you want to. like how you also enjoy followers, and are addicted to Twitter or chocolate or something. whatever you want!). I will draw names from a HAT (a really spiffy steampunk hat too. Oh just wait. There will be pics! Or maybe a video if I can work YouTube**).

Also, because I do have to be slightly annoying in the hopes that more than 1 or 2 people enter, you get TWO entries (your name on 2 slips of paper in the hat!) if you Tweet this post to your friends (include me @egoodlett to let me know you did, so I can count it!).

ALSO. MS crit can be redeemed WHENEVER YOU WISH. So if you win and you don't have a MS ready to hand over to me, that's cool! Just shoot me an email when you do have one you want critiqued. :)

YAY. Entries will remain open through the end of next week (until Friday May 27th).

P.S. - if the world ends on Saturday, I promise to still read your manuscript once I acquire internet access in my publishing house's underground bunker***

* Though if your manuscript is over 100k, expect to see many big red lines through huge chunks. Fair warning.
** And by "work YouTube," I mean "rotate my iPhone videos so they aren't permanently sideways." Anyone know how to do this? *bats eyes hopefully*
*** This is not a joke. We have a bunker. They made us fill out checklists with things we want in bunker, like "phone? computer? printer?" I was like "where is the checklist for LOTS OF CANNED FOOD and maybe a BOW AND SOME ARROWS?"

The 5 Types of Tweets

2011-05-18T23:08:00.003-04:00

Twitter has been the new in-thing for some time now. I'm sure we've all heard the horror stories (gossip girls use it to gossip about shoes 24/7 and irritating people with spray-tans just talk about themselves constantly!), but I've seriously found Twitter to be a useful tool for connecting to other writers, publishing industry professionals, book bloggers and avid readers.

But, when I try to explain Twitter to some of my non-writerly friends, I find myself having a hard time. I thought about why it was so hard to describe using Twitter, and I think I figured out why -- There isn't just one way to use the platform.

I made a list of the "types" of Tweets I post, and I narrowed the list down to 5 categories that cover them. Working from that, I also thought about the goals that each of those categories aim for, and Tweeting tips for each of those 5 categories. So here goes:

1) Quotable Tweets.
These are things you post that you're hoping other people will re-Tweet (RT in shortened Twitter-speak) to their friends. For example, if you were e.e. cummings, and you got all inspired one day and you were like "omg! The most wasted of all days is one without laughter!" you could Tweet that.
Goal(s) - to get your name on other people's Twitter pages, to entice more followers, or to start up new conversations with the followers you have, based on a topic that interests you (since you're the one initiating the conversation, I'm just going to assume that your quotable Tweet regards something you care about).
Tips - Twitter is already an abbreviated platform, with only 140 characters per Tweet. But if you're trying to entice others to quote your Tweets, make them shorter than that 140 characters. Leave your readers enough space to add a "RT @yourusername" to the front of the post, so that they can easily copy and paste your pithy message to their own followers.

2) Chatting Tweets.
Say you're inspired by another person's quotable Tweet, and you want to engage them in conversation. An @theirname reply will catch their attention. Hopefully they'll be interested, @yourname reply to you in turn, and you begin a conversation.
The other time chatting-Tweets are useful is if you're following a #hashtag conversation. For example, if you search #askYAed during a pre-scheduled "Ask the YA Editor" meeting, you'll see a list of various people's Tweets all responding to the conversational topic. Chats like these are a great way to get to know other Twitter users (... I tried to type Tweople here. I did. But it just made me cringe so much. Urgh!). Plus in the process, you can learn useful info about your industry!
Goal(s) - to engage with other people, to respond to conversations already taking place, and hopefully to learn some new things about your areas of interest. And maybe make a new friend in the process!
Tips - if you know you're going to be involved in a busy chat (the #kidlit nights can get pretty hectic!), you might want to sign up for an application like TweetChat ahead of time. TweetChat lets you pull up #hashtags into what looks like a chat window. It updates via live-feed, so you don't need to keep refreshing to stay on top of the conversation. This makes it easier to participate, without missing the good bits! Plus, it automatically adds the #hashtag of the night to whatever you're Tweeting (I cannot tell you how many times I've come up with replies to other people in live chats on Twitter, but forgotten to add the hashtag, so they don't see it until way later when they click out of the chat and check their @theirname page. Sigh).

3) Follower-sharing Tweets.
By this, I mean things like #FollowFriday (#FF) or #WriterWednesday (#WW). You list a bunch of @peoplesnames who you think are cool, and your friends might be interested in following. Hopefully, if they're nice, the people you recommend with suggest you to their friends as well!
Goal(s) - to gain new followers and find new people to follow
Tips - don't be afraid to follow back. Get a little, give a little! You don't have to auto-follow everyone (then you'd be following a lot of spam-Tweeters, and nobody wants that), but if someone else interested in, say, writing YA novels follows you via a #FollowFriday recommendation, follow them back! Who knows? You might learn something really helpful from them. And it doesn't hurt to follow a lot of people. Unless you're following 809 people and have no followers of your own. Then you might get reported as spam.

4) Re-Tweets.
The famous RT. I tend to RT anything that either makes me a) laugh, b) say "OMG THAT'S SO TRUE," or c) say "Wow, I never knew that!" There are two ways to RT -- you can either hit the "Retweet" button next to the Tweet you want to quote (it looks like a little square recycling sign), or you can copy and paste the person's quote (their screen name included) into your post box, add a RT @ to the front, and resend.
Goal(s) - to spread cool links/quotables around the web, because everyone needs interesting factoids and giggles. Also, you probably want other people to RT your posts. You want other people to RT your posts. You're hip, you're funny, you know where it's at! But other people want you to RT theirs as well. Give a little, get a little.
Tips - Personally, I find the "RT @theirusername Cool funny thing this person said! http://withalink.com!" to be the most effective. People notice it more often, remember that you were kind enough to RT their interesting post, and generally shoot you a quick thanks.
However, if I'm short on time, or if I see a long Tweet from someone that I can't be bothered shortening, but that has an interesting link in it I want to check out later? That's when I use the recycle-y looking Retweet button, because it will save that Tweet in my "Retweets by you" section so I can look at it later.

5) Linkable Tweets.
This is the big one. Since Twitter involves such a short amount of space, outside links are the most common way to get your message across. For example, you might want to link to the hilarious video of your cat doing flips on the carpet. Or to a cool article on feminism you found. Or to your own blog.
Goal(s) - to show your followers all the cool/crazy/intriguing stuff on the internet that you know how to find. Yeah! They should pay attention to your Tweets, because you know where the party's at! Also, another main goal of linking, especially for writers like me, is to drive traffic to your blog.
Tips - If you do want to drive traffic to your blog, I would suggest the use of something like HootSuite. You can set the system up to automatically post a Tweet, including a pre-set number of characters, that posts to your Twitter page whenever you write a new blog post. You can also set how many times you want the system to post that Tweet.
Most people only check their Twitter page a few times a day (unless you occasionally become addicted, like I do. Then you must drag yourself away. Then you avoid it for days at a time, until, like a junkie, you crawl back and... ahem. anyway). If you want them to see your updated blog post, but you only Tweet about that blog post at noon, and your friends log on around 4 p.m., chances are they'll never notice your Tweet. That's why it's good to set HootSuite to re-post about your newest blog post every couple hours for a day or so (not every 10 minutes though. You don't want to be irritating. Just want to get your message to as many people as possible).

Okay! So that's it for my brain today. Weeee. Anyone else have tips they want to share, or other types of Tweets you think I missed?

You Know You're a Writer When...

2011-05-17T23:45:00.000-04:00

This weekend, my mom, brother and I went to see a show (not Wicked. I just like that picture of Mom, because it's so appropriate... *hides*).
We saw War Horse, which I thought was going to be weird, because it's about a horse, and half the main characters are giant puppet-horses, and how can you write a serious and depressing WWI play about giant puppets?
But it turned out to be really well-done and AWESOME.
Anyway. So we're waiting outside the theater for the doors to open, and Mom asked me something about where this one group of well-dressed people were going, why they were entering first or whatever, and I tried to say "I think that's where the VIPs go."
Except instead I said "I think that's where the WIPs go." And then I sat there for half a minute trying to figure out why WIP didn't sound right in this context, before I remembered that Works-In-Progress are not what I meant to reference. Someone's been revising a little too hard lately, hmmmm?

David Letterman Show

2011-05-16T11:00:00.004-04:00

I've had a very NY-esque week.
I've been living here for a year and a half now, but I don't always take advantage of the place. I go out a lot, sure, but it's usually to eat/visit my friends at the restaurants where they work/go to writer's group. And sometimes I'll go to Trader Joe's.
Other than that, I can get pretty hermit-like, especially in winter. I hole up in my living room with the kitties and write/watch bad TV/play far too much Solitaire. But now it is almost SUMMER and it's finally warm out again, and I feel motivated to DO STUFF.
I had some extra motivation last week because my mother and brother were in town visiting. I researched all the fun NY-esque stuff we could do (go to an art gallery opening! see obscure museum exhibits! visit weird tiger exhibits in South Seaport!). Unfortunately, most of my ideas did not pan out (art gallery opening reception turns out to be for press only... obscure museum exhibit is only one floor of bad photos... tiger exhibit that claims to still exist online actually closed last year...).

Luckily for me, my mom's a bit more organized. She and my bro won us tickets to the Dave Letterman show (you had to answer trivia to win them. like "what color is the announcer's hair?"* and "what instrument does Paul Shaffer play on the show?"** neither of which I knew, so good thing they called mom and Kevin instead of me).
So, on Thursday afternoon, we showed up to get our tickets. They gave us great seats, really close in front (though unfortunately off to the side, so you couldn't see us on camera when they panned the audience).
At 4, we lined up in the (freezing cold!) entryway to prepare for the filming. The production assistants (who must have either been cheerleaders or theater majors) got the audience rallied up, by making us scream a whole lot, and gave us our instructions.
These include: no shouting while Dave or a guest is talking, or the band is playing, or any point when it's not the audience's turn to laugh. No "woo"-ing (y'know, that sound you make any time someone tells you to scream, which as it turns out is really hard to suppress when you're supposed to make a lot of noise, but NOT go "WOOOO!"?). Lots of clapping. And extraneous laughing, even when jokes aren't funny. As they put it -- laugh now, think about it later.***
I'm not a huge fan of the show (BLASPHEMY! ... they make you swear up and down that you're the biggest fan ever before they let you on), but it was definitely a cool experience. And the jokes did seem funnier in person, in an audience full of hysterical laughter, than they do at home when you're watching it on TV.
Plus, the guest that night was the Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons, who plays Sheldon on the show. I have a huge crush on Sheldon (wut? I like tall nerdy guys, okay!!), so this was awesome.****
Also, interesting fact. The bridge thing in the backdrop of the show? It's a 3-d model. MIND IS BLOWN NOW?!
... maybe it wasn't that exciting, but I thought it was cool. And when they lifted the scrim in the backdrop behind scenes to bring on the Brooklyn chorus to accompany the band performing, we got a glimpse of all the storage containers and shelves lurking behind said bridge! This is NYC after all. Even on a TV show, no space can go to waste!
Also, another fun fact. This is Dave Letterman with a beard:

And this is my dad:

Can you tell the difference? Neither could the tourists on our annual family Disney World vacation trips back in the day, who constantly asked Dad for his autograph...

* the announcer's hair is red, as it turns out. I didn't even know there was an announcer?
** and he plays the keyboard. which I probably would have known if they'd said "that annoying guy with the weird laugh" instead of "Paul Shaffer"
*** which explains why the audience always seems to think Dave's dumber jokes are hilarious... I'd wondered about that on the few occasions my brother forced me to watch Letterman instead of Colbert (HERESY).
**** also, kind of weird. Jim has very similar body language to Sheldon (awkward and a bit feminine), which I'd always thought he was putting on in the TV show. But maybe he's kind of a nerd in real life too? BIGGER CRUSH NOW.

Dear Blogger

2011-05-14T23:31:00.003-04:00

WTF.
Did anyone else's blogs randomly post old blogs that they wrote ages ago, and then deleted? O.o
Mine also deleted some recent comments and changed some edits I made on my latest posts.... Good job on the updating there. SIGH.
Anyway, new post tomorrow, hopefully, when I figure out if this is working correctly again or not!
<3

Strange Things My Cat Eats

2011-05-11T11:23:00.001-04:00

Not to be one of those crazy cat ladies*, always talking about the antics their pets get up to, but c'mon... Pets are so much more fun than we are!
And mine are weiiird.
Well, okay, the girl kitteh, Tonks, isn't super-strange. She has this issue where she pees everywhere, which is very unfortunate for me, my roomie, and our furniture. (and she is basically the cat version of a case on House, because the vet can't figure out wtf is going on). But other than that she mostly cuddles in your lap and gently nibbles on your fingers all cutely. (and makes you feel guilty for having to punish her in case the peeing is behavioral... sigh).
But she eats normal things! She likes cat food and various meat (especially deli chicken) and hot dogs (possibly the only thing the boy kitteh won't eat).

The boy kitteh, Boggart?** He eats the WEIRDEST things.
Such as:

Blueberry pie (not the crust or the whipped cream. Just the filling)
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Tomato sauce
Pasta
Udon noodle soup
Indian food (though he didn't like that... don't think he'll try it again!)
Cheese (okay, Tonks likes this one too, but that's not too strange I guess)
Hand sanitizer (to be fair, he was drunk on painkillers post-neutering at the time...)
Chicken bones (bugger was too quick for me to steal them back in time, argh)
Tinsel (luckily we did rescue this before he swallowed. yummy.)***
Pens (he tries to eat them, anyway)

In addition, he doesn't eat these, but he enjoys to sniff the following:

Sharpies
Nail polish
Nail polish remover
Cleaning supplies

... Boggart is a little druggie-in-training. Sigh.

Anyway. Time to stop studying the babies and get back to work!

* to be honest though, I'm pretty sure at this point that I will be a mad old cat woman, someday.

** This Boggart. Not this one:

(kitteh is not as suave as that Bogart... yet!)

*** btw, if you want to be terrified to death, other cat owners, ask your vet what tinsel and string could do to your cat's intestines. :|

Castle and Writing

2011-05-09T13:40:00.000-04:00

Alright, first, confession time: I have developed a slight addiction to crime shows. (NOT CSI! I have SOME standards. Pfft. *hides from the CSI fans now).

This includes Castle, though I don't love it as much as the others.

The dialogue is awful. And it makes it look like writers are famous multi-gagillionaires, whose publishing houses fly them around the world in five-star hotels with famous people. Oh, and people recognize them on sight (I have a huge list of writers I fangirl over, and I'm pretty sure I'd only recognize maybe 5 of them on sight).* BUT! At least it does focus on a MC whose career is writing, and some of the issues he has resonate with me. (though I still cannot figure out how the other MC, Beckett, became his "muse." Uh she is SO boring and one-dimensional. Cliche kickass female cop with no love life who refuses to open up to love, much?)

However, sometimes you get episodes like the last one I watched. Castle and Beckett go to LA together for a case (though Castle is actually supposed to be visiting the set of his new movie -- which okay, I guess if he's supposed to be like, Stephen King or something, he might have a say in some of the movie stuff, or at least get to visit and fanboy over the set).

While they're on the movie set, one of the actors comes up to Castle and asks him to explain his character's motivation.

"Why do I do what I do?" he asks.

Castle's reply? "Uh... You're a cop. It's your job?"

what. WRITER FAIL. Even secondary characters should have more to them -- hidden motivation and backstory and wants and problems and character growth arcs. Otherwise they just become flat, two-dimensional cut-outs (much like Beckett! oh wait...). If Castle is such a famous author, he should totally know this.

I mean, if one of my very secondary characters came up to me on a movie set and asked me about HIS motivation? ... Well, first I would die of happy, because, holy shit, my book is a movie and I am standing on the set and they are actually filming it.

But then SECOND! I would give him the whole huge list of reasons why he does what he does (bad guy or not). Because I know it all, for each character. What comes out in the text of the novel itself is only the tip of the iceberg.

Anyway. This post makes it sound like I should never watch this show. Here's the main reason you should:

***

Dear Nathan Fillion: Please to marry me now? kthxby.

He's not just pretty! He's also a totes awesome actor. I swear he makes even the cliche lines sound good. Mad skills, y'all.

* Although it has a slightly less unfair portrayal of writers than Bones and NCIS, which both have MCs who have super-involved day-jobs (forensic anthropologist and crime scene investigator respectively) and work overtime all the time... and then they're like "oh yeah and we like publish these bestselling novels on the side too, no big deal, and the novels are all thinly-veiled retellings of the cases we work on, starring barely-disguised imitations of our coworkers, but we deny that any of it is based on reality. because writers never invent characters who are not based almost exactly on people they know and things they have experienced, LULZ"**

** okay, that rant got a little longer than I expected...

*** and another thing. We are supposed to believe that Beckett works with THIS MAN every single day, and he follows her around like an adorable, over-eager puppy, and writes HAWT SECKS SCENES starring her, and she does NOT want to bang him? WHAT. Okay, maybe I could've bought it if the tension went on for like, a season. But now it's getting ridiculous. This is like Bones and Booth all over again.
GRAWR.

Top 50 Hottest Literary Men

2011-05-07T13:25:00.001-04:00

My roomie and I stumbled across this list of 111 Male Characters from British Literature (in order of bangability), and we disagreed with many of the missing persons (and also the faiiil order of some of these).
SO.
We have drawn up our own list! (not limited to Brit-lit).
The Top 50 Hottest Literary Men (according to us), starting from the bottom:

50) MacBeth
49) Pippin (Lord of the Rings)
48) Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility)
47) Dennis & Sandy (Many Waters)
46) Mr. Tumnus (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)
45) Huck Finn
44) Sherlock Holmes
43) van Helsing (Dracula)
42) Almanzo Wilder (Farmer Boy)
41) Lestat (Interview with the Vampire)
40) Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
39) Jack/Ernest Worthy (Importance of Being Ernest)
38) Corlath (The Blue Sword)
37) Dixon (The Secret Garden)
36) Romanovitch (Crime and Punishment)
35) Athos (The Three Musketeers)
34) Simon (Lord of the Flies)
33) Pip (Great Expectations)
32) Snape (Harry Potter)
31) Colin (A Wrinkle in Time)
30) Edmond Dantes (The Count of Monte Cristo)
29) Henry (Mansfield Park)
28) Gilbert Blythe (Anne of Green Gables)
27) Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
26) Peter Pan
25) Eomer (Lord of the Rings)
24) Colonel Brandon (Sense and Sensibility)
23) Sirius Black (Harry Potter)
22) Mr. DeWinter (Rebecca)
21) Edward (Sense and Sensibility)
20) Jean Valjean (Les Miserables)
19) Westley (The Princess Bride)
18) Charles Bingley (Pride and Prejudice)
17) Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing)
16) Fred (Harry Potter)
15) Faramir (Lord of the Rings)
14) Remus Lupin (Harry Potter)
13) Carles Darnay (A Tale of Two Cities)
12) The Artful Dodger (Oliver Twist)
11) Laurie (Little Women)
10) Paul Atreides (Dune)
9) Legolas (Lord of the Rings)
8) Howl (Howl's Moving Castle)
7) Mr. Knightley (Emma)
6) Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre)
5) Robin Hood
4) Odysseus
3) Aragorn (Lord of the Rings)
2) Rhett Butler

and, naturally...

1) Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)

Motherhood = Expensive

2011-05-05T12:34:00.003-04:00

Now, my babies are tinier, harrier, and more mobile than most...

(double-trouble)

But they definitely give me some small idea what motherhood would be like. Hectic, unpredictable, stressful and EXPENSIVE.
My kitten is the girl, Tonks (on top in photo). She's been having issues all along, mainly with peeing inappropriately (aka, all over the house. le sigh). which okay, annoying, but we can deal with it, and try to train her, and hopefully she might grow out of it.
We've had her tested for a UTI (urinary tract infection, common in females) a couple times, no results. Then yesterday her symptoms changed dramatically (in a way I won't go into details about, in case anyone is reading this over lunch...). We rushed her to the vet this morning, where they did a round of tests.
The new infection appears to be unrelated to the random peeing, and seems to be an intestinal parasite of some kind. Yay.
So now my poor baby is home sick with even more problems, I have had no sleep from stressing about her all night.
And the vet bill? Let's just say, it's a good thing Mommy has a steady job, babies... *DIES*