Monday Madness: Revisiting Old Friends

I've been taking advantage of my library card lately and so I've been reading a lot of books. Some good. Some not. And it's the ones that are "not" that's made me really crave the familiar...and the knowledge that the book I'm going to read is a good one.

So, this week I'm going to dust off some of my hardbacks and read some old friends. And hopefully it will remind me why I write. For the beautiful, magical words and worlds, the lively characters, the amazing dialogue. THAT is why I read. That is why I love literature.

But unfortunately, I've read quite a few books lately that have left me with nothing more than a "meh" feeling. I hate that feeling. I'd rather loathe a book than feel nothing for it. Loathing still means that the author did something RIGHT somewhere along the way (at least right enough for it to twang one of my nerves). When I come across a book that doesn't do either for me, it just makes me sad.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know that not every book was intended for whatever audience I'm grouped in. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a book lacking that certain something that just makes it breathe. That something that makes me FEEL something. Rather than annoyance. I'm annoyed too much for that to be a book's fault.

So I'll be pulling some of my old friends off the shelf these next few weeks (until I once again get the thirst for fresh ink). I'm going to bury my nose in those pages and remind myself that there are books out there that sing.

How about you? Ever need to take a breather from those shiny new releases and pick up your favorite, dog-earred paperback? Which one is it? Please share!

Dieting and Book Give-Away

I found a really neat website the other day that I thought I would share. It's called The Waistline Test. Now, this might sound like a dieting tool...and it is! But it's for your manuscript. You can "take the test" by entering up to 1500 words of your text into the text box. The test will then "measure" if your text is "lean," "fit & trim," "needs toning," "flabby" or is about to have a "heart attack" in five different areas: be-verbs, abstract nouns, prepositions, adjectives & adverbs and the use of it, this, that, there. Pretty handy to see where your story needs work. 

I entered the first couple hundred words of a short story I've never finished (just lost the spark for it) and this is what I came up with:

be- verbs	abstract nouns	prepositions	adjectives &adverbs	it, this that, there
lean	lean	lean	lean	lean
fit&trim	fit&trim	fit&trim	fit&trim	fit&trim
needs toning	needs toning	needs toning	needs toning	needs toning
flabby	flabby	flabby	flabby	flabby
heart attack	heart attack	heart attack	heart attack	heart attack

I never wanted to come back here . Five years ago I had left Arkansas behind with all of my redneck sensibilities , my farewell a finger in the air . But here I was back in the Natural State , sucked in by a force as inescapable as a black hole . I knew I should have never answered that phone call . I had let it ring as a sign of petty defiance . The answering machine picked up . My accent- free drone of “ This is Kevin . Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible” didn’ t fool anyone— least of all my mother . “ Kevin ? This is your Mama . Pick up . I know you’ re there . ” Rolling my eyes , I picked up . “ Hey , Mom . ” “ How come you never answer your phone ? ” “ I couldn’ t get to it in time , ” I lied . She wasn’ t convinced . I had never been able to fool her . Sometimes I thought it was the mother- instinct , but perhaps she just knew me too well . “ So , what’ s up ? ” I asked , walking the few feet across my flat to stare down at the congested traffic below . I wasn’ t really interested in what she had to say , sure that it would be a combination of grandchildren news and thinly- veiled suggestions that I wasn’ t getting any younger . But she surprised me . “ Robert had a heart attack . You need to come home . ” The first sentence concerned me . The second one irritated me .  

Overall, the writing sample is fit and trim

Yeah, it messed up all my formatting, but that's not the point. The point is it visually highlights your weaknesses. Cool, eh? I found it particularly handy with my query, since it is just one of the things that needs to be as tight as possible. 

Also, I just wanted to let you know that Janice Hardy is giving away an ARC copy of Blue Fire, the next book in her Shifter series. I haven't had the chance to pick up Shifter, yet, but it's definitely on the top of my To-Read list. 

According to the Shifter's blurb: Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker--with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healer's League apprentices, Nya's skill is flawed: She can't push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she'd be used as a human against her own people.

Rumors of another war make Nya's life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposer her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she's faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?

Sounds pretty cool, eh? Check it out!

EDIT: I think I  fixed the link to Ms. Hardy's give-away. 

I'm Addicted!

NOTE: Only 3 days left for the haiku contest. Contest closes at 11:59 p.m. Monday.

A while back, I got into a discussion about addiction with a few of the forumites on WD. It focused on smoking, and I confessed that I don't really understand addictions. And it's strange, because my father's side of the family is full of people with addictive personalities (my father included). But me? I've always been able to walk away from anything.

That's a good thing, right?

Yeah. But, I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm missing out on something. I don't want to be addicted to alcohol or drugs or cigarettes, but I would like to be addicted (or at least obsessed with) something harmless. Coffee. Chocolate. Books.

Wait, books? :D I love books. I forgot about that since it's been SO LONG since I bought one. So, I guess I do have an addiction. OMG, I'm so happy. I HAVE AN ADDICTION!

I seriously, could not live without books. My life would be empty. Meaningless. I have to look at them, touch them, READ them. I can read a book multiple times (if it's good) and still come out of it with a word-charge high. I love bookstores, too. I can spend, literally, HOURS in one. Which is why I don't go very often. I spend too much money. :(

But...my birthday is coming up. I think I deserve a couple of new books. :D

Gimme! Gimme!

I totally want this book. Heck, I want any book by this author who is not only hilarious and suprisingly "in touch", but can freaking WRITE. So, I'm entering this contest, and you should too.


In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other.  Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack.  And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love -- the light and the dark, the warm and the cold -- in a way you will never forget.

Comes out in stores everywhere July 20th. Pre-order here.

Enter to win an advanced review copies of LINGER, Sisters Red, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and The Replacement on Maggie's blog

Out With The Old

Have you noticed the new bend of fantasy covers lately?

Let me just give you an example, via my favorite author:

It would appear that some authors are abandoning what you would call the "traditional" fantasy cover (i.e. illustrated characters, elaborate backgrounds) for a sleeker, more contemporary look.

If this trend catches on, it will definitely change the face of sci-fi and fantasy. The people that were once put off by cheesy illustrations will now have minimalist covers to peruse. Believe what you will, but the idiom "Never judge a book by its cover" is not something a book-shopper keeps in mind. Covers are like wrapping paper. The more attractive, the more we're intrigued about what's inside. And these new covers definitely have me intrigued.

It's a pet peeve of mine to have characters depicted on the cover anyway, especially when they look nothing like what I would imagine once I've dived into the text. But this new look...I think I can handle it.

What are your thoughts?

What's on the Bookshelf?

I've been somewhat of a snob lately when it comes to reading . . .and it makes me want to cry.

Why? Well, I picked up a romance (woot) by one of my favorite authors and ended up rolling my eyes every other paragraph. I blame my inner-editor, but when it starts interfering with just enjoying a book, then you know it's time to re-evaluate the situation. Which led me to two conclusions.

1) That I was being overly critical, having aftershocks from editing "Fury", and needed to give Ms. Favorite Author a break.

2) The book really did suck, and I had just realized that one of my favorite authors wasn't such a great author after all. ::cry::

So, I head to the bookshelf. Well, THE bookshelf (I have two, you see. One for generic books that were "ok" and one for my FAVORITES). Well, her books are on THE bookshelf, which is one of those sleek, cherry, leaning bookshelves that I honestly squealed over when my boyfriend bought it for me for Christmas <3.>

They're women.

::Gasp!:: I'm a sexist reader! 

Well, I had to prove that I wasn't a sexist, so I delved and found that I happen to have a few books on there by men. They are as follows: Christopher Paolini's books; J.R.R. Tolkien's LOTR trilogy and The Hobbit; Piers Anthony's Dragon on a Pedestal; Nicholas Sparks' The Lucky One (which I haven't read, whoops); and The Bible (argue all you want, it was written by MEN). 

The rest, which usually include more than one book, are by Anne Bishop <3, Julie Garwood, Teresa Medeiros, Stephenie Meyer (hey, they're hardbacks), Kristen Britain, J. K. Rowling and...

I think that's it. They're some art books, and then my books stuffed in binders, but that's it.

Still, if you look at it with squinty eyes, you're going to see that the female authors overwhelm the men. Looking at it--still squinty eyed--I came to the conclusion on why that was:

Women tend to write about other women. They have strong female characters who are, more often than not, the protagonists. As a woman, I like reading about female heroes. And, if they're not the hero, they have to be more than one-dimensional. Male writers (not all!) seem to have the problem of putting women in categories. This is especially true with "classic" literature. And since they got away with it centuries ago, some modern male writers think they can still get away with it. The Rejectionist had a hilarious rant about receiving such manuscripts recently.

However, I have no desire to avoid male writers simply because they're male. So I'm trying to broaden my horizons. If you have recommendations, I'm all ears.

The Selling Point

As some of you may have guessed, I have been on a Harry Potter reading spree lately. Well, naturally after reading all of the seven books, I decided to move on to watching the movies. I'd seen bits and pieces of 1-4 before, but they were disappointing. These past few days, however, I forced myself to sit down and watch all of them.

I was still disappointed. 

The movie critic in me will admit that the movies have gotten progressively better, but they're still lackluster compared to the books. And that's my problem: I can't separate the books from the movies. Which means instead of enjoying the special effects or the quality of acting, I'm muttering about how this and that is missing.

Which brings me to the point: Movies and books have different selling points. 

For example: If I wrote a book based completely on the Harry Potter movie (let's say the Goblet of Fire), I would have a pretty pathetic book. There is no Winky, no hints of dark things to come, and everything would seem to happen by luck rather than any sort of premeditation or foreshadowing. The reader would miss out on that "Ah-ha!" moment that I absolutely reveled in while reading. I would never sell the movie-book, that's for sure.

Which makes me wonder how low we've stooped to find something so one-dimensional entertaining. And that's what the movies are: one-dimensional. 

I will admit it's impossible to incorporate all the elements of  a book into a movie (it would be extremely long) but when you completely warp the plot it just pisses me off. That's why I can't stand the movie Eragon. It made me want to pull my hair out. Another movie where I was muttering the whole way through.

So, really, is it inconceivable to follow the same basic plot of a book in its film adaption?