meomeoim

I've always liked Tim Burton. Since I was about four years old. Before I had a concept of what a director was or that he was doing things I enjoyed, I'd reguarly watch them and love them. He does something wonderful that taps into the magic of life that I will be always be envious of. But I was just reading The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy , which I bought for Eric recently. It came out over 10 years ago, so its not anything new, but I just finally got around to it. It's a compilation of flash fiction, very short stories written in rhyming prose. It is a very very unusual book. I don't even think I mean that in a bad way. He captures the simplicity and vulgarity of being the troll in the fairy tale with an unnatural ease. He's able to cast beauty on on things that aren't, but his stories and drawings are still occasionaly offputting. The title story is perhaps the most disturbing thing I've read. It's written in rhyming poem, and its perhaps five or s...

I finished The Hollow Land , and after giving it one cursory read-thru before the real editing starts, I'm pleased with it. It's still hard for me to tell if anything I write is good vs. publishable good , since I'm too close to the product, but I think this is good.  I think the reason I'm having any doubts is its almost complete lack of pop culture references. They were just hard to fit in a post-apopcolyptic action novel about zombies. I slid in a couple, and only one of them might be off-target. (Paul Giamatti is not big with the young adult crowd.) But it worked for me. I'm excited to go back to writing the My Blood Approves series, now that I'm done with this one.  Here's one thing I learned: It's hard writing a love interest for a super badass heroine. If he's more badass than her, if he rescues her all the time, it detracts from her own badassness, and almost defeats the purpose of making her so tough. But if he's a total wuss and alw...

Over the course of the past year, I have spent a good deal of time reading popular writing tips, many of which have either helped me improve my writing, or at the very least, let me know when I am on the right path. While I am not a dazzling successful published author (yet), I've decided to compile a list of things I've learned that I find most valuable: -Use any forms of "to be" as minimally as possibly (e.g. was, were, am, be, been) -The word "said" reads better than flashier words like "vowed, grumbled, declared" -Never start a book with too much backstory, a phone ringing, or someone waking up -Describe things that only need description - if its not relevant, move on -Adverbs are not your friend -Topical ideas and pop culture are fun, but they date your book and make it stale -Be consistent - if your protaganist has brown hair on page 1, make sure it isn't blond on page 100 -Outlines are vital -Do not query until you're revised your ma...

I recently wrote an excellent blog about how we should all overthrow the government. Then something happened and I realized that I had much more pressing soapbox to get on. Adam Lambert kissed a dude on the American Music Awards last night. He did other things, which I'm not going to comment on because I don't want to spend three hours writing a point by point of his performance compared to his female peers, and it's also not entirely relevant to the point I am going to make. ABC chose not to reair the kiss (and I am only speaking of the kiss itself, not any other part of his act) because it was inappropriate. On the West Coast, his performance was censored. The blogosphere is all atwitter with disgusting and rude and disgraceful, etc this act was. I am not even going to defend the kiss here. I am not going to make parallals between similar girl on girl kisses I've seen, or the amount of hetrosexual kissing/sex that I see on television, including ABC. I was disturbed b...

So I spent the last month or maybe two feeling a little rough about the whole thing. Rejection hurts worse the closer you get. But now I've redoubled my efforts. I started a week ago, and I'm about 35k words in, and I'm hoping to be done writing the first draft by Thanksgiving. It's a post-apocalyptic young adult with zombies, bad ass female leads, rock stars, road trips, and even a little love story. Yes, it truly has it all. I am writing this for a few reasons: 1. Zombies are awesome. 2. Thanks to the 2012 crazies, end of the world literature/movies/etc. is more popular. 3. I need to stop writing such misogynistic books. 4. Ellen Ripley (a.k.a. Sigourney Weaver of Aliens fame) is bad ass 5. This is exactly what my future agent Ginger Clark is looking for. So, without further ado, here is the first line of my new soon to be agented manuscript: "This is the way the world ends; not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies scratching at the back door."

This me trying to do The Secret , so my plan to do that is to let the universe know what I really want. So here it is: I want a literary agent. Specifically, I'd really like Ginger Clark. After following her tweets, I've come to believe that she would appreciate my writing probably more than any other agent I've read up on. I'm afraid that the query letter I recently emailed her wasn't enticing enough, so I'm enlisting the universe to try and help me. She seems like a fun gal that has a chinchillas, which is always a plus. She loves Jack Donaghey, although I can't imagine how anyone wouldn't. (I frequently laugh over his mention of "Rainstorm Katrina.") She seems fun, enjoyable, and dedicated, and she seems to take risks on new writers. But what's in it for her, you ask? I have written a young adult/uban fantasy, which she is interested in, but she wants a twist on something, i. e. not Twilight 2.0 . When reading urban fantasy, you will fin...

The Limosuines song "Very Busy People" keeps making me want to watch Donnie Darko . Oh well. So, it's mid-October. I have completed 4 books since January (with breaks in between.) I have started another three ( Wisdom , the fourth in My Blood Approves series; Proxy , the second in the Switched series; and Honalee , the first in a witch series.) Plus I just completed the outline for a new as-of-yet-untitled book. This one isn't urban fantasy, just straight young adult, and it deals with a group of friends, who are gay. You don't see enough of that right now. Gay guys are usually regulated to a shopping partner, the fashionable best friend to the protagnist, and lesbians only seem to exist as hot girls in fantasies or bitter ex-wives on sitcoms. So I want to write one that's more realistic. One that is aimed at gay young adults and/or their hags. But I have three books I need to finish ( Wisdom really won't take that long. Proxy wouldn't either, but I...