Books that have changed my life

In the spirit of Group blog #2 I'm going to write about a few books that have changed my life. For a look at other memes on this subject take a look at Sarah's blog and her friend's blog. So in no particular order here they are...

Sweet Valley Twins The Magic Christmas by Francine Pascal

So this book I remember reading sometime in elementary school. As a child I was a voracious reader (I still am) I read books faster than my parents could buy them for me. Part of that meant I didn't really remember all the books that I read unfortunately. However this book I remember in vivid detail. I loved the Sweet Valley Twins series as a whole and this one in particular left me with love and devotion for books that was previously unknown to me. It also introduced me to the world of fantasy. Jessica and Elizabeth are transported to another world in this book with two handsome princes that were trapped in dolls. They venture to a magical world where they can do magic and have to save a kingdom from the evil doer who has taken over. It was also about a rift between sisters and how the little things aren't as important as they seem. This book influenced not only my burgeoning love for the fantasy genre but also taught me moral lessons on how to get along with my sister-especially at Christmas.

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

So this book I don't remember quite as well as the above. This was however the first book I remember being moved to tears. It's about two best friends living in Denmark during the German occupation. This book shaped how I feel about equality among people and their religions and anything else for that matter. Being different faiths did not matter to these little girls to the extent that the girl of Jewish faith was taken in by her best friends' Christian family. It's a powerful book, especially to my 10 year old mind. It taught me lessons about the value of friendship and the importance of realizing that people are different and that's okay. There are huge moral lessons in this book, I would encourage everyone of all ages to read it but especially children. Everyone should know about the Holocaust and everyone should learn about true friendship and doing whatever it takes to help them.

The Eye of the World, Book 1 of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

This book has probably been the most influential in regards to both my reading and writing habits. I'm pretty sure I've read this book at least a dozen times and it is still just as good-if not better-than the first time I read it when I was in Jr. High. The first "epic" fantasy that I've read by arguably the most influential authors in the genre. The entire series is fantastic, although some of the later books (particularly book 8 and book 10) are very weak when compared to book 1. If you've ever had an interest in reading epic fantasy then you must start with this book. Complex characters, a huge world, unique magic systems, quest to save the world, talking trees, expansive action scenes, secret societies...it's all there and all awesome. I started writing before I read this book however it was The Eye of the World that made me want to write fantasy. It stirred a passion in me to read every piece of fantasy I could get my hands on. Sadly Robert Jordan passed away from a blood disease prior to completing the Wheel of Time series. However the wonderful Brandon Sanderson is currently taking on the task of completing it using Mr. Jordan's extensive notes and he was personally selected to write the final book by Mr. Jordan's wife. Anyway, if you only ever read one fantasy novel in your whole life you should read this one. It's fantastic.

The Iliad by Homer
I'm pretty sure that if you haven't read the Iliad or the Odyssey then you need to. The Iliad was one of the few books that I refused to throw away after my ceiling collapsed onto it. The poor book was drenched and probably should have been disposed of but I simply couldn't do it. Every page of my water damaged copy is covered in notes from the class I took on it. The Iliad is chock full of morals and lessons on how to act proper in Greek society. It was a how to guide for ancient Greek and is largely still applicable. It's not just a classic story, it isn't just one of the most ancient pieces of literature out there. You can watch all of the movies about the fall of Troy and Helen and Achilles and still only grasp the tiniest bit of all of culture and life that is in the Iliad. I remember one of the (many) battle scenes in which the entire scene is written "Bob son of George son of Frank killed Sam son of Harry son of James" and it can be pretty tedious to read those parts. However if you don't then you'll miss tiny lines that go like this "Bob son of George son of Frank was about to kill Sam son of Harry son of James but they recognized each other and realized that Sam son of Harry son of James had dinner with Bob's family before the war started so guest right still stands and so they did not kill each other". Tiny little gems of wisdom, the struggle Hector faces fighting for his family and country but knowing he will die. Achilles battle within himself for glory or long life-he cannot have both. Books like the Iliad withstand time not because of their age but because they are still relevant. So go read this book, buy it and love it and let it teach you about life and group settings and sociology like it did me.


Those four books are not at all the only books that have influenced me, but they are the ones that jump out clearly. I certainly have a huge number of favorite books and I think it would be impossible to pick out what has influenced me out of each of those books. Books, like anything else can have whatever impact you want it to have. Some books are there only for entertainment value but others teach you things or influence your choices and thinking. Sometimes you don't realize the impact a book will have on you until much much later. So everyone, keep on reading!

Goals and Tiredness

So I've been feeling pretty tired and slightly under the weather lately. I think it's my lack of days off. Luckily the 4th is right around the corner and I'll have a day off there. Not to mention the mini-vacation I'll have in mid-July and the full on vacation I'll have in August. But that's all in the future and doesn't help my lack of sleep nor does it help my lack of days of work right now.

In one of Brandon Sanderson's recent blog posts he mentions that he isn't cut out for a "real" job. Some days I'm pretty sure I'm not either even though I (generally) like my job. I certainly like my benefits and paycheck. I also found out recently that my friend Becky is planning on quitting her job in a year and a half after she is vested with her company to focus more on her own writing. This is both an uplifting and depressing thing to hear, uplifting for her and for the aspirations of writers in general and depressing because it's not me doing it.

That being said I think if I ever managed to finish anything I might allow myself the freedom to do that. After all Daren did move out to LA to pursue his dreams so why not give myself that same chance? No reason at all except for the whole bill paying thing. So okay it isn't a viable option right now but it's nice to dream about it.

So in order to get anywhere close to that I need to set some goals. My brain has turned to mush with the lack of sleep and increase of work and just everything. I should set some realistic goals for myself so that I finish my novel and can figure out what I want to do next. But there's no point in thinking about the next step until I have something to show.

So okay...set some goals...right...what exactly IS a realistic goal anyway? I'll come up with one and you guys can all chime in and come up with something as specific or as general as you want. I'll even make a sidebar, that might help me stay motivated!

Goals:

1. Finish the first draft of Blood of Renatus NO LATER THAN September 1st.
2. uhmmmmm your turn
   

Better get moving!

So I spent the weekend at the Froeschle Farm with most of Daren's cousins and all of his aunts and uncles on the (you guessed it) Froeschle side. Anyway back in December I promised Eli and Paul a draft of The Blood of Renatus whenever I'm finished. Eli especially is an avid reader of all things-especially fantasy-and it was nice to talk about my book with someone in the family that wanted to hear about details and who cared about the fantasy aspects. So pretty much the first words out of Eli's mouth to me were "So how's your book coming along? You promised you'd email me the draft remember?" Yes Eli, I remember!

I had to explain that I stopped working on it for a few months due to some unfortunate and fortunate happenings in life. Mainly the whole apartment collapsing fiasco and the subsequent house buying funness. There is nothing like a push from someone other than your husband or best friend truly interested in what your doing to make you feel motivated. It felt good to have someone ask me about it who I know isn't asking simply to make conversation. I also introduced him to Brandon Sanderson while I was down there as I'm STILL reading Mistborn. So hurrah there! :)

In other news, I nervously emailed the wonderful George RR Martin today. I've had a few (brief) messages back and forth with Brandon Sanderson before but that didn't make me any less nervous to contact the illustrious Mr. Martin. I guess I shouldn't be nervous about that kind of thing but to a fan of reading and writing and all things literary it's the same thing as talking to a movie star. If (hopefully when) he writes back I'm pretty sure that's one email I'll never delete.

Also I wanted to mention that Daren and I watched No Country For Old Men on Friday. Now I'm not going to write a review nor will I post any spoilers. All I want to say is that this movie ranks only slightly above The Fountain. This is not a good thing. The Fountain was arguably the worst movie I've ever seen. That includes all of the horrible, cheesy kung-fu movies from the 80's that I love to watch. Seriously...why in the world did No Country for Old Men win Best Picture?

Silly characters!

So as many of you know but some of you don't I recently reorganized the entire beginning of my novel adding three chapters. So now my original chapter 1 is chapter 4. I can't even tell you how much better it is this way. I was trying to cram so much information into the original chapter 1 that it felt bogged down and boring and pleh. I tend to struggle with info-dumping and while I know I'm still doing it in the new Chapter 1 it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Although that unfortunately or fortunately means a huge bit of editing now for chapter 4.

Well I was working the other night on new chapter 2 which happens to be a Shay chapter. Shay has always been one of my favorite characters to write. She's so easy compared to writing the moodiness that is Rafe or Katze. Light hearted and bubbly she tends to be a much happier character than the rest of my lot. It's such a great contrast to me and hopefully to the reader because Shay is an "enemy" priestess but she's so much more normal than the "good" guys. Of course don't make assumptions, everything changes.

But the weirdest thing happened. I was writing a scene in which Shay had just woken up from having passed out. Her "good" brother Saif was comforting her and then in walks her "bad" brother Savitr. Now Shay, my nice and sweet Shay is really really mean to Savitr and i can't decide what to do about it. She was mean to him and now he's being unforgivably mean back (because that's what he does the wanker). My problem here is that I don't actually want any sympathy to be garnered for Savitr, he's cruel and mean and doesn't care that he's cruel and mean. Shay is supposed to have all the sympathy! But when I go look at that scene i think "wow, Shay baited him and I actually feel sorry for him. I bet his siblings ganged up on him a lot and that's why he's so nasty." Thoughts like that shouldn't occur!

At the same time, however, it wouldn't even be remotely realistic to have Shay actually be nice to Savitr, plus he does deserve it. So I'm torn between how to make Shay (in her first appearance) her normal nice self and still be condescending to her brother. She is a bit of a spitfire which lands her in quite a bit of trouble but it's supposed to be spunky not crass. I have enough of that to deal with in my other characters (I'm talking to you Katze, your royal moodiness!).

Any thoughts from fellow writers out there who understand that sometimes the characters do whatever they want even if it doesn't fit?

Revelations and Endings

I've come to a revelation about the ending of my book. But I'm not going to tell you anything about it except to say that I have decided upon an ending for book one and it feels nice. It certainly isn't what i originally planned but obviously the original plan wasn't working.

What this means is that the block that was preventing me from finishing the last 1/3 of the novel is no longer there. I had switched to re-tooling the entire beginning because the end was being elusive. It feels like a nice breath of fresh air now and it has propelled my mind into the planning of book 2 which is nice.

So now I have to focus on finishing the new beginning of the novel and I can go back to where I left off in chapter 16 and move forward. Certainly the beginning needed to be changed, it also wasn't working. My original chapter 1 is now chapter 4 and the book flows much better. Plus it was pretty important to put Gabriel in the beginning of the book instead of not appearing until chapter 20 or so.

Anyway my point is I see the road clearly now for the first time in several months which is both exciting and daunting at the same time.

Also, if you haven't already read my excerpt then you should. There is a hyperlink in the links column if you don't feel like scrolling down to the last post. And yes I know there is a typo in the first paragraph and no I'm not going to fix it at this point.

Despondant and an Excerpt

So I've been feeling fairly depressed the past couple days. It's hard to explain really but sometimes when a person is undertaking such a monumental task (i.e. writing a novel) it becomes overwhelming. Lately my mind has been thinking about all the things I should know to get into the industry. I should know publishers and agents, I should be up to date on what said publishers and agents are looking for. But I'm not and it's been getting me down a little bit.

Of course none of that impacts my story whatsoever and while my goal is to be published eventually I'm not going to write my books based on what the industry wants today because it could and probably will change tomorrow.

So that being said I figure I'll go ahead and post Chapter 1 of The Blood of Renatus. Please keep in mind that this is a ROUGH draft and although I've gone through it several times and haven't noticed any glaringly obvious errors I'm sure some of you will. Posting it here in no way means it's polished and publishable but that being said I am quite happy with this chapter even if it is a little longer than it probably should be (it's about 5700 words). So there you have it, I hope it doesn't have too many errors!

Word Count

I was going to post my excerpt for you avid readers today however I left my flash drive at home so alas I cannot. You'll just have to wait a bit longer for that. In the meantime you should scroll down a few posts and read the hilarious 500 word auto-summary.

I have good news! I wrote a bunch of new chapter 2 this weekend hooray! I'm getting closer to finishing book 1. After I looked up some page length vs word count for already published authors I've decided on an ending for Book 1. If I were to end the book where I originally planned it would be far too long. I'll give you an example. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a nice quick read at about 320 pages. This book is only 77k words. Granted the typeface of this book is larger than what you would find in most adult fantasy books but still 320 pages is nothing to sneeze at. I'm currently at 62k words and I have roughly 10 more chapters to write at my current book end. I average between 3k-5k words a chapter which means I have between 30k-50k MORE words to write if I maintain my pace. This would put my book at somewhere between 90-110k words. Now realistically I'd want my book to be closer to 110k than 90 however according to Brandon Sanderson the "sweet spot" for Fantasy publishing is currently between 90-120 for unpublished authors. He did however mention that his first book was closer to 200k. Probably if I ended Book 1 where I originally planned it would be about that.

I don't want to rush the story to squeeze it into something a literary agent or a publisher would prefer but I also don't want to cut it short. I am afraid that the designated spot would leave a reader largely unsatisfied. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how I feel when I get to that point. Don't most books have at largely positive ending, a victory for the good guys? Maybe it's good that if I end the book where I'm thinking that won't happen but then again what would that mean for Book 2?

I realize most of you can't give me any advice because you had no idea what I'm thinking or where the book is headed at all. That being said you should still give me comment love, I only get comments from Sarah and Mike :p

So I promised I'd post more today

But I'm really busy at work today so I don't have time to write anything. So I'll leave you with another picture of how I felt this morning...and nearly everyday.


more cat pictures

Procrastination

I'm pretty sure this picture exemplifies me most of the time.


more cat pictures


I'll write more tomorrow...

Foiled, Foil and foils

Taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/foil

• Foil –verb (used with object)
  1. to keep (a person) from succeeding in an enterprise, plan, etc.
• foil –noun Fencing.
  1. a flexible four-sided rapier having a blunt point.
• foil-noun
  1. One that by contrast underscores or enhances the distinctive characteristics of another

I my friends have been foiled, will use a foil and have created foils.

Last night I sat down at Doozen's coffee house planning on finishing a chapter of my book. I had my ipod, I was focused (as much as I ever am) and ready to go. I wrote an ambitious goal of writing 1500 words last night on the goal-board and I was planning on meeting that goal. My plans, alas, were foiled. By a tornado. Or rather a funnel cloud hanging ominously above my house threatening at any moment to dip down to the ground and send my house and my cats to Oz. Luckily none of that happened, I did however have to stop everything I was doing and rush home to save said cats from certain doom should the tornado form on the ground. Let me tell you...getting Pixie into a cat carrier is not pleasant. Needless to say I didn't get any writing done, I was too busy being in panic mode. Plus I didn't want to plug in my laptop in case there was a power surge from the copious amounts of lightning. There wasn't. I did however watch War Games. Matthew Broderick looks sooooo young in that movie.

Foil as bullet point 2 describes it is something that I will be using come mid June. I'm taking a beginners fencing class with Sarah on Sunday afternoon for 5 weeks. It should be a huge amount of fun. I imagine that it will help in my writing as well but mostly I think it'll just be fun and a good workout.

Foils as characters. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately actually. It's good to have characters that are foils of each other, however, it is not good to create a character simply because you want that person to have a foil. If you did that then you'd only end up with pairs of characters and I don't think that makes for interesting characters whatsoever. Katze and Gabriel are foils of each other and I did plan it that way. They went through the same tragedy and came out of it completely different and dealing with life and people completely different. Katze and Shay are foils of each other because Shay is so happy and Katze so...isn't. However Katze and Rafe are not what I'd call foils of each other because they are so similar. They have quite a few of the same characteristics. That being said I also don't think Rafe and Gabriel are foils even though it would make sense given the previous sentence.

I think that strong personalities need someone to balance them both in life and in stories. But I think realistically the balance comes from many different people. Katze's coping mechanisms have a foil in Gabriel but Katze's general demeanor have a foil in Shay. If you put all of your characteristics in one person and then have the exact opposite written into another character it isn't true to life. It also becomes boring and predictable and just pleh. Also you must remember to keep similarities among characters even if they are a foil and most especially if they are not. Katze and Gabe do have some similar traits, if they didn't they wouldn't have any ground to ever come together in any meaningful way.

So foils I've also decided are hard to write correctly if you are trying to make them as such. Meaning if you're writing characters and you suddenly realize how they balance each other and you realize that they are foils of one another I think that's awesome. That comes out of creative instincts and letting your characters think for themselves. If you try too hard to make a foil then it usually ends up as a failure or at the very least it feels forced and trite.

That's all I have to say except FIE on tornado's! FIE!!!

Auto Summarize

...in case you were wondering I have nothing to do at work until 1:00...

I played with auto sumarize in MS word today. Here's what I got from the Blood of Renatus in 500 words :)

The Blood of Renauts in 500 words

You know you've played too much Mario Kart when...

In no particular order...

1. You start searching your car for turtle shells to shoot at the car that just cut you off
2. While at the front of the line at a stoplight you pray the guy in back doesn't have a blue shell
3. While stuck in traffic you wonder if there's a secret route just off the road that will give you a speed boost
4. You look extra closely at that piece of litter to make sure it isn't a shiny, rainbow box
5. The guy in the car next to you looks strikingly like Wario
6. You think that your brakes are the same thing as the B button and will give you a speed boost if you skid the curve
7. You think the guy in the motorcycle next to you must be cheating, only karts are allowed on this 50cc highway
8. You think that if you push on the gas at just the right moment coming out of a stoplight you'll get an extra burst of speed
9. You start judging the weight of the cars next to you wondering if you can push them out of your way.
10. You avoid that discarded banana peel because you know it'll make you spin out