Incubus

By Rachel | Published: 3 August 2010

I mentioned yesterday that I have set up a plan of attack to keep myself on track. In all honesty, it makes me incredibly nervous, because the attack will be on Incubus.

A little background on Incubus:

I started writing this book nearly two years ago (sometime in August 2008). I had always loved writing, but this was what re-sparked my passion for being a writer. This book is the one that made me see how badly I really want to be published and have a career in writing.

I didn’t finish it.

At first, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. The story came to me and I put it on paper screen as fast as I could. I got about a third of the way into the story and hit a wall. It wasn’t a bad block, but instead of just patiently working my way through it, I turned to the internet. In times that I was having difficulty writing, I read agent, editor, and author blogs. I read articles on the mechanics of writing, the importance of characterization, and – most dangerous of all – the trends in the market.

Don’t get me wrong: industry blogs are wonderful. They are full of useful information. But I wasn’t just getting information (and even if I was, it was premature). I was letting these blogs seep into my mind; the more I thought about them, the more I thought Incubus was not enough. So I rewrote what I had done in a different POV. I changed some of the back-story. I tinkered and fiddled and messed with the story, trying to make it better.

But it wasn’t better. Sure, my writing got stronger and stronger, but what I had written was a product of all those blogs I let infiltrate my thinking, not a product of the story I set out to tell. I finally finished a working draft, and while the basis of my story is still there, it is buried under all the things I had learned and tried too hard to apply. It is going to take some serious excavation to get Incubus back out again.

Plan of Attack:

I am starting with an OUTLINE. Gasp! Okay, I have outlined before, and enjoyed it, but I still consider myself a more fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type writer. I love just sitting down and seeing what comes out. And sometimes that works great. For instance, I will not outline So97. I just won’t. It is my fall-back, write-just-for-fun book, so I want to just see what comes out. So97 is that manuscript I open to work on when I get too bogged down with something else. As of now, I have no plans to ever seek publication with it (that might change after I finish it, but who knows), so it is completely for fun. So97 gives me that chance to be completely free to discover the story as I write. And if I meander off course a little? Oh well…

I learned time and time again, however, that seat-of-pants writing will not work with Incubus. I need to be able to wrangle myself in when I write this book, so I will need an outline. And not just for one book.

When I first envisioned Incubus, it was as the first of a trilogy. I know the basic plots of all three books, but have only written (no matter how poorly) the first. In my plotting, I think it will be helpful to see where I am trying to go through the full trilogy, so I can keep early events in line with those that need to happen later. So, my outline will be a three-book outline. Books 2 & 3 will likely not be outlined in as great detail as book 1 at this point, but they will be outlined.

Wow…that sounds like a lot of outline work. I better get to it.

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Full-Time: Day One

By Rachel | Published: 2 August 2010

I woke up with Bubba today, like always, but something was different. While he was getting ready for work, I lay back in bed a bit longer and marveled at the idea that I didn’t have to get ready if I didn’t want to. Today marks my first day as a stay-at-home, full-time writer, and I have to say it’s…um, weird.

yeah, this has nothing to do with my post. I just think it's cute. Also, my Sophie-cat eats paper, so if I don't watch out, this could happen to my outline.

It’s fun to imagine what it will be like being a full-time writer. I see myself writing away, quill pen flying across the paper, lit only by the flame of an oil lamp. Beautiful pieces of prose flowing from mind to paper with ease.

Yeah, right. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Really, the only thing that will be different now is that I will have more time to write. It will still be hard work and I will still struggle with the same things I always have. Only now I get to work hard and struggle all day! (Yes, I am incredibly thrilled about this.)

In fact, now that I am home full-time, writing might even be more difficult than in the past. Up until now, I have always had to squeeze my writing in around work, church, husband, and occasional social events. With the limited time I had, I was forced to focus and write as much as I could in one short sitting. Now, with hours upon hours stretched out for writing every day, I am afraid I will let myself get distracted enough that I will be less productive than I have been in the past.

In order to combat all the little distractions, I am taking time to set up a plan of attack. I am usually pretty good about staying focused if I’ve written down things I need to accomplish. So, while if my only agenda is write, I might let myself slack off just as long as some writing gets done. However, if I break down how much I want to write, or what plot points I need to cover in a day, I am way more likely to keep myself on track until I cover all those points.

Also, if the distraction gets in my way too much, Bubba can set our router to block the internet from my computer during certain times of the day. He is way more computer savvy than I (which is good, considering he is a computer programmer), so I won’t be able to override what he does. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but who knows?

I am kind of rambling here, but I have a lot on my mind about this change, so I will keep on rambling. :)

Since I am now home during the days, it falls on me to keep our house clean and in order (yeah, I have been totally spoiled in the past, and Bubba has been cleaning after work so I can have time to write). My first project is tackling the guest room. Otherwise known as The Pit. Come across something and don’t know where it should go? Eh, throw it in The Pit. After 2+ years of doing this, it is probably needless to say that The Pit is pretty bad. Nobody really sees it, so we usually just ignore it unless we need to go retrieve something from its depths. But, we have a problem now. For the rest of the summer, I will probably be writing outside as much as possible, but after that, The Pit is going to be my office. Which means I need to be able to walk through it. Which means I have a lot of work cut out for me. Starting today.

/ramble

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Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

By Rachel | Published: 31 July 2010

When sixteen-year-old Tessa Gray crosses the ocean to find her brother, her destination is England, the time is the reign of Queen Victoria, and something terrifying is waiting for her in London’s Downworld, where vampires, warlocks and other supernatural folk stalk the gaslit streets. Only the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the world of demons, keep order amidst the chaos.

Kidnapped by the mysterious Dark Sisters, members of a secret organization called The Pandemonium Club, Tessa soon learns that she herself is a Downworlder with a rare ability: the power to transform, at will, into another person. What’s more, the Magister, the shadowy figure who runs the Club, will stop at nothing to claim Tessa’s power for his own.

Friendless and hunted, Tessa takes refuge with the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, who swear to find her brother if she will use her power to help them. She soon finds herself fascinated by—and torn between—two best friends: Jem, whose fragile beauty hides a deadly secret, and blue-eyed Will, whose caustic wit and volatile moods keep everyone in his life at arm’s length…everyone, that is, but Tessa. As their search draws them deep into the heart of an arcane plot that threatens to destroy the Shadowhunters, Tessa realizes that she may need to choose between saving her brother and helping her new friends save the world.

I have a confession: I have not read the Mortal Instruments series yet. I have them sitting on my bookshelf at home. I bought all three of them at the end of January (I think), but haven’t cracked them open yet. Bubba, however, plowed through all three of them in less than a week. Which is why, when I got Clockwork Angel from Traveling ARC Tours, I let him read it real quick before I read it (I was still reading Firelight anyway, so it was just sitting there…). So, while this review is mostly my own, I am going to draw from a few things the husband said, as his perspective was a little different having read the other books.

Okay…enough with that.

There isn’t much I can say about the plot (aside from what is in the synopsis above) that won’t give things away, so I will just dive right into what I thought.

As far as the plot goes, I loved this book. It was intriguing, with enough action to keep things moving right along, but enough mellow spots thrown in there to let me slow down and just enjoy the writing. Which is great. Clare’s prose is not overdone, and the style fits perfectly with the time period of the book.

I think I am just going to take a minute to break down the good and bad of this book, using only my favorite and least favorite things (I’ll admit: I am starving, but I won’t go get food until I finish this review, so I am only going for the extremes). :)

The Good: Maybe I only really noticed this because I was coming off of reading Firelight, where I was less-than-impressed with the characterization, but I loved it in this book. I felt like all the characters were fleshed out nicely here. Everyone had a motive, no matter how small, for acting the way they did. Good guys, bad guys, guys who I couldn’t tell whose side they were on…they all had their reasons for being the way they were. And we got to experience those reasons. Even Will – he often acted abrasive and cold for no apparent reason, but I also felt like he had a solid motivation for those actions. It never seemed that Clare just wrote his character that way; rather, I think he has some deep-seated reasons for acting like he does. Reasons I am hoping we will learn about in the next book (the epilogue of this one leads me to believe maybe we will).

The Semi-Bad: This is where Bubba comes in. Having not read Clare’s first books, I could not have picked up on this, but Bub definitely did. While the characters are well-fleshed out, they are also very reminiscent of the ones in the Mortal Instruments books. The husband unit says Jace and Will are very similar. There is a Gem-like character in the first series. The secondary girl characters shadow each other between the books. I will have to see if  I pick up on this when I read the other books (which I will soon, promise!), but Bubba definitely got that vibe.

The Bad: grrrrrrr. Why is it that in YA, when a girl finds herself with two semi-love interests, she always pisses me off? I see it happen time and time again. There is a girl. And two boys. One of the boys is sweet, kind, and gentle. He obviously adores her, though he might do it from afar, without being in-her-face about it. He is good to her, always. The other is hot and cold. One moment he is kind to her, the next he is abrasive. There is a spark between them, but as soon as they act on it in any way, he completely shuts down and treats her like crap. But which of these boys is she going to choose? Of course! What woman wouldn’t want to be with a guy who treats her like crap 50% of the time. Seems like the best option to me too.

Except for, yeah, no it doesn’t. Yet I see it over and over and over again in YA books  (probably in other books as well, but I will be honest that I see this setup in YA more than other genres). The girl almost always goes for the guy who is a jerk half the time. Yes, the argument could be made that this happens in true life a lot as well (which it does), but still I would like to see this change a bit. Can I suggest we all read Wicked Lovely for a great example on NOT doing this. :)

Phew. Rant over. Aside from my obvious issue with the love story, I really did adore this book. I will definitely read the rest of the series, along with the Mortal Instruments series.

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Firelight by Sophie Jordan

By Rachel | Published: 31 July 2010

(Sorry, y’all. WordPress was beign totally LAME Thursday and Friday and wouldn’t let me post for some reason. So you get both reviews today.)

With her rare ability to breathe fire, Jacinda is special even among the draki—the descendants of dragons who can shift between human and dragon forms. But when Jacinda’s rebelliousness leads her family to flee into the human world, she struggles to adapt, even as her draki spirit fades. The one thing that revives it is Will, whose family hunts her kind. Jacinda can’t resist getting closer to him, even though she knows she’s risking not only her life but the draki’s most closely guarded secret.

I had heard a lot of great things about this book, so when an ARC was offered up for the Traveling ARC Tours, I jumped at the opportunity to read it.  Still, I was a little apprehensive about Firelight before I dove in, and for the first part of the book.

The premise is intriguing. Jacina is a Draki; descended from dragons, she has the ability to change from human to draki form at will (mostly – draki is her natural form, so when she is threatened, it is self-defense to change, whether she wants to or not). More than that, though, Jacinda is a fire-breathing draki – the first in hundreds of years.

The pride she lives with considers Jacinda their crown jewel. Could the fire-breather help them solve the problem of diminishing population? We never find out, as, after a dangerous daytime flight (forbidden), Jacinda’s mother packs Jacinda and her twin sister in the car and runs from the pride. Now Jacinda must learn to live among the humans.

Problem is (aside from missing her pride), Mom moved them to the middle of the desert, and Jacinda’s draki-self is dying. She needs the cool, humid mountain air to sustain her. She is afraid that before long, she will lose that part of her self and be able to manifest as a draki no longer.

But, there is one thing in her new town that makes her draki feel alive, that makes her feel like she can soar again: Will. Will, whose family hunts the draki for money.

This is what made me nervous about the book. I am really burned out on YA novels where the main (female) character is drawn to the person she KNOWS is dangerous for her. I read it time and time again. The narrator mentions that so-and-so is dangerous and she shouldn’t be with him, but for some inexplicable reason she is drawn to him, so safety-be-damned she will be with him anyway. I was scared I would read more of this in Firelight and that it would make me dislike the book.

But I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, Jacinda knows that being around Will is not safe. She knows who his family is and what they do. She makes an actual effort to stay away from him, despite his efforts to get closer to her. She snubs him and avoids him; she even runs away from him once or twice. Eventually, yes, she gives in and spends time with him. Unlike the books where this irritates me, though, I felt that Jacinda had a solid reason for going into the danger zone. She wasn’t just blindly following love lust, she was trying to keep alive that part of herself she feared was dying.

I did have one major qualm about the book: characterization was just so-so. The main characters were fleshed out nicely, but the secondary ones were just kind of there. The mean girl was just mean (as was her posse); no characterization other than mean. Will’s family members(aside from him, of course) were only brutes with nothing to them other than being blood-thirsty hunters. Jacinda’s few friends were there, but unremarkable (I remember almost nothing about them). Even her twin sister and mother, whose characters were pretty important in my mind, did not get fully fleshed-out.

Overall, I enjoyed Firelight immensely. The plot, while simple, was solid, and I am excited to see what happens next.

(On a side note: I LOVE simple plots. A lot of people seem to think that to be good, a book must be complicated. Not so.)

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I’m back!

By Rachel | Published: 28 July 2010

Did y’all miss me? Did ya, did ya??

Bubba and I are back from vacation now (we actually got back this weekend but I was exhausted, so I extended my bloggy vaca by a couple days). We had a great time relaxing at the lake and catching up with family and friends. Not to mention eating a ton of great food (seriously, my step-dad is a great cook).

I have a couple book reviews to put up tomorrow and Friday and then!….starting Monday, I will be a full-time writer!! Whoa. That’s weird.

How have y’all been since I left? Anything exciting happening in your lives? Comment away!

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See ya later, alligator!

By Rachel | Published: 16 July 2010

Goodbye bloggy friends!


Not that I am leaving forever or anything. But I am taking off to spend a week in the greatest place ever (admittedly, despite being a nomad for a few years, my travel experience is limited to my view might be biased). Tonight, I will turn my computer off…and then leave it off for more than a week! It is going to be great to get away.

Don’t miss me too much. I will be back in the cyberwebs soon enough.

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A couple things on my mind

By Rachel | Published: 13 July 2010

I guess since it is Tuesday, and I have two things I am thinking about, I could call this a Two For Tuesday, but I’ll be honest…connecting the two things will be quite a stretch. So instead I will just ramble on about them (’cause that’s what I do best).

I admit it: I love this movie. I just adore Sandra.

First…it is a kind of bittersweet day for me. Today is the day I give my two weeks notice at work. (Really, three week…but one of those weeks I am on vacation, so it can’t really count, can it?) I am excited to be able to stay home and write and thrilled that it is possible, but I really do love my job. I was lucky to have found it in the first place. My coworkers are great, the work is fun (most of the time), and I enjoy talking to our clients and the film companies. Pretty much it is the perfect job for me.

I know a lot of my friends (and probably my mom–Hi, Mom!) will think I am crazy for giving this job up. And you all are right–I am a little bit crazy for letting it go. It is a GREAT job. The work is interesting–I get to learn fun stuff about movies and watch trailers and stuff before anyone else! The pay is good, and the perks are wonderful. Really, if things were different, I could see myself working my way up and making a career as a film buyer.

But, things are not different. As much as I love this job, there is something missing, because what I really want to be doing is writing. Yes, I know. whine, whine, whine. People write and sell books all the time while still having a day job. I know that. But here’s the thing–I also like to spend as much time with Bubba as humanly possible after work. Which takes a big chunk of writing time away. Maybe it is because we have only been married a couple years, but we are one of those couples who just spends almost all of our time together. I feel bad going home from work and then hopping right on the computer for the night.

We are in a place now where I can really take the time to pursue my dream and put a full-time effort into my writing, so why wouldn’t I, regardless of how great my job is? So, even though I will be sad to leave it behind, I really think it is the best thing to do. Who knows, maybe I will regret this in the future. I doubt it though.

Secondly…this is kinda a rant, so if you want to skip it…go right ahead! :)

The internet is a big place. It is easy to get lost browsing around. But the blogosphere–especially the author/aspiring author blogosphere–is pretty small and tight-knit. So if you do something like, say, close your Twitter account and delete your blog and tell a friend you did it because you “just wanted to get away from a few things”, but really you just transferred your blog to a different domain and got a new Twitter account, you probably should know that the lie is not going to hold up.

Just sayin’.

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When do you know someone?

By Rachel | Published: 12 July 2010

In Beautiful Malice (I told you that book sticks with me – don’t worry, I will try my best to not be spoilery here), the main character hides who she truly is. She has her reasons–she wants to put her old life behind her and doesn’t want everyone to know what happened in her past. I get that. Then there’s Alice. Charming, volatile Alice. She is really not who she says she is (I won’t say more than that, because that really would ruin something).

When I first read the book, despite how much I loved it, I couldn’t help but thinking, can someone really be that duplicitous? I had a hard time wrapping my mind around how someone could seem to the people closest to her to be one person, but in reality be someone else.

You know what’s weird about when you doubt something? Life has this strange tendency to find a way (often unpleasant) to let you know, hey, it’s true, that kind of stuff really DOES happen in real life.

About a week and a half after I finished reading Beautiful Malice, I got my confirmation that people really can be just as two-sided as Alice was. Here’s the story:*

***

A few years ago, I was really close friends with this person. We did nearly everything together, and I could probably count the days in a six month period that we didn’t see each other on one hand. I knew this person inside and out. Or so I thought.

Recently I learned that this old friend of mine did something terrible. Like, really, really, makes-you-ill-to-hear-about-it terrible. And it wasn’t a one-time slip-up (though, honestly, I don’t think those exist in a case like this); it was something that had been going on for years. And nobody know. On the outside, this person was still the same wonderful, charming, fun person I knew back then. But beneath the person everyone saw, there was another, completely different person. A person who could do things that the person I knew never would. And even though the two of us have not been friends for four years, it still really made me question a lot about our friendship and my ability to see people for who they are.

My first thoughts–after the initial shock–were along the lines of what has changed? How could the person I knew have changed into this other person in the few years since we were so close? The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I don’t know that this old friend of mine has really changed. On the surface, people still saw the person I knew. There wasn’t a different person there as far as anyone–even those closest to this person–could tell.

After realizing this, my thought process changed. Now I wonder how long? How long has this person been living a lie? How could I not tell what was going on beneath the surface in all the time we were together? I know I shouldn’t beat myself up about it–I mean, everyone else was fooled by the same act that fooled me. But at the same time, I can’t help it. I guess I am still just in a little bit of shock.

In the end though, one thing I do know is that Rebecca James got it right when she wrote Beautiful Malice. People like Alice really do exist. This is not a comforting thought.

***

*Yeah, so I tried to keep the story as ambiguous as possible while still getting my point across. Maybe I just made a confusing mess of what I was trying to say. If so, sorry about that. I just didn’t want to spell out details about what happened. Many of my readers already know who and what I am talking about (and many more of you can probably take a pretty close guess at the what based on what I wrote), but I feel no need to be specific.

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Beautiful Malice

By Rachel | Published: 9 July 2010

Is it possible to love someone too much? Is it possible to love them so much you wish them dead?

Katherine Patterson wishes she could disappear. Instead, she does the next best thing. After the death of her talented younger sister, Katherine leaves her grieving parents to the media’s merciless scrutiny and moves to a new city and enrolls in a new school. Wary and alone, she seeks nothing more than anonymity. What she finds instead is the last thing she expected: a friend.

Alice Parrie is the most popular and magnetic girl in school. Extroverted, gorgeous, flirtatious, and unpredictable, she is everything that Katherine is not. Her enthusiasm is infectious, her candor sometimes unsettling, and she is impossible to resist. She takes it upon herself to involve Katherine in an entirely different life of parties and trips. She introduces Katherine to Robbie, her soulful on-again, off-again boyfriend. She becomes as close to Katherine as a sister can be, maybe even closer.

But Alice has secrets darker than anyone can imagine, and Katherine will soon discover the darkest of them all.

For Katherine Patterson, there is no escaping her past – only a descent into a trap far more sinister…and infinitely more seductive.

Beautiful Malice is another book I got to reading on a Traveling ARC Tour basis. I actually finished this one quite some time ago, but I had to wait a while to be able to write about it because it haunted me!

I don’t know that any review I give this book will do it real justice. The story is heartbreaking, the characters real, the emotions tangible. From the very first line – I didn’t go to Alice’s funeral. – I was absolutely hooked. There is no wonder in my mind why this book has sold in so many territories already (something like 33); it is just that amazing.

I can’t say much, because I don’t want to give much away. But I will say: this book releases in the US next week, and you all should run out to get it! Just make sure you are ready for a few sleepless nights, because this is a story that will not let go of you.

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Why do you do it?

By Rachel | Published: 6 July 2010

I have a big confession to make. A sort of embarrassing big confession. Are you ready? Okay, here goes:

Today, at work, a coworker and I watched the ending of the Lindsay Lohan Trial online.

Ick. I can’t believe I actually watched it. But we just had to know whether she was going to be sent to jail or not (um, yes, for 90 days…any bets on how long she actually has to stay?). Anyway, after the judge found Lindsay to be in violation of her probation (um, duh), Lindsay’s lawyer went on and on, essentially grasping at straws, saying anything she could come up with in an attempt, I think, to delay the sentencing. But, somewhere, amidst all her babble, she actually said something that stuck with me:

I remember once, I was riding in the car with my mom. We came up to a stop sign and saw a cop, so my mom stopped. When she took back off, the cop pulled her over because, “you only stopped because you saw me.” (paraphrase)

The lawyers point was that it didn’t matter WHY her mom stopped, only that she DID stop. Which really got me thinking…

Why do we do the things we do? Do we do something because it is how we have been taught and is what society and the law tells us do do, or do we do something because we genuinely believe it is the right things to do?

Looking at this from a writing/reading view: when you are writing a character reaction, is the reaction what it is because that is how things would be in the life YOU live, or is the reaction really, truly what the character would do?

Why do we (and our characters) do the things we do?

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