Lighting A Fire

My wonderful critique partner, Ryan Graudin, saw the launch of her debut novel, All That Glows, this past week! (It is so very good! Get yourself a copy.)

While I wasn't able to head down South to party with her, I of course rushed out to buy a freshly minted copy (or two).

I wanted to buy all the available copies, but figured
that would make me greedy.

This long-anticipated event has filled me with pride and warmth and all the good feelings. It has also lit a hot, hot fire under my posterior to finish my current WIP and get it out into the world. Anyone who's allowed me to chatter in their ear about my writing knows that finishing this WIP has been one of my biggest challenges in the past (wow, almost two) years. I wrote the first 65,000 words in four months - a new record for me - and then two jobs started happening, and moves and trips and crazy deadlines, and I started having to get up at 5AM just to carve out that little bit of extra time. It's been a molasses-slow crawl, even at the best of times.

It's not because I don't love this novel. In fact, I love this novel more than anything else I've ever written. It's the number of hours in a day. It's how cold it is at 5AM.

But I can feel that fire under me, burning away at my writerly skin. I'm so, so close to being finished.
So I am making a proclamation.

I am 78,392 words into this novel. I have entered the portion of the story that I like to call the Everything Explodes period, where everything comes to a rather startling head. I am ALMOST THERE. And so, I have decided that I absolutely, positively must finish this book by my brother's birthday: March 15th. I started this book in the spring, it is set in the spring, and it will be finished before the first breath of spring.

And with that, I give you some writer's quotes I enjoy quite a lot.

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

- Jack Kerouac

"Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. If you're lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page." - Margaret Atwood

"The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it ­honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter." - Neil Gaiman

"Be without fear. This is impossible, but let the small fears drive your rewriting and set aside the large ones ­until they behave – then use them, maybe even write them. Too much fear and all you'll get is silence." - Al Kennedy

Introducing...(#2)

This post is a little late, but I couldn't resist the desire to crow about this little baby, on which I had the privilege of working:

This magazine, out now, contains 100 unique and off-the-beaten-path destinations from around the world, many of which are places that few tourists know to go (my favorite: Coomera Falls in Australia's Gold Coast Hinterland). Each location is accompanied by useful information about what makes the place worth visiting, and how you can get yourself there. This magazine is for people who love being adventurers rather than tourists; for those who want to experience the unique and untrodden. I loved working on this project, and I hope you'll love it, too!

Book Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
Genre: YA mystery with a touch of paranormal

I swallowed this book whole while down in Charleston and then got to go and see Michelle Hodkin speak about how she ended up writing this, her first novel. She was working as a lawyer in New York and happened upon a woman who was suing the owners of an abandoned house after said house collapsed on, and almost killed, her daughter. Hodkin referred them to someone who might be able to help them and went about her business. A long time later, she found herself wondering what had happened to the pair, so she Googled them and couldn't find one scrap of information. She kept asking herself what could have happened to them; this book is her fictional answer to that question.

The book opens up telling the reader that the main character is probably a killer, then sends us back in time to when she woke up in the hospital with no memory of the house collapse that killed three of her friends. The family pick themselves up and move from New England to Miami, hoping to give Mara a fresh start. But from the moment Mara starts attending her fancy new school, her PTSD--and the extremely sexy, extremely aggravating boy who seems to pop up everywhere--continue to haunt her. Until she starts dreaming about the night of the accident and realizes that she might not just be a victim; she might also be a killer.

First of all, look at that cover... outSTANDING. It sets the perfect tone for this fast-paced, surprisingly funny mystery thriller. This is a deliciously creepy story. I love the way Hodkin uses the horrors of PTSD to explore a young girl's search for meaning in a world that, for her, just isn't making sense. Her narrative voice is one of the best things about this novel: fresh, acerbic, witty and well crafted. And then you've got Noah, whose British accent and wayward rebelliousness make him a character after my own heart. Hodkin makes their relationship crackle with a sexual tension so taut that it almost leaps off the page at you. I tried not to rip the pages as I followed Mara through some pretty bizarre circumstances, trying to figure out whether what she was seeing was real or imagined.

I will say that there were moments where the love story bordered on becoming too big a focus: I'm not a fan of the whole "he is so pretty and suave, how could be possibly like me?" scenario. But overall, the connection between Mara and Noah makes for a fun ride. Be prepared for a mother of a cliffhanger ending, though: good thing she's got the sequel coming out in 2012. I'll be pre-ordering that one!

If you're not sold on this book yet check out the book trailer, which is definitely the best I've ever seen:

Book Review: I'll Be There

This is the first year since 2006 that I've been in the States for Thanksgiving, and I find myself grateful for a lot of things. For my family, who believes I'm capable of greatness even on the days when I refuse to change out of pajamas. I'm thankful for the collection of close friends and confidants who have urged me to keep on writing stories. I'm thankful that I have a place to live, good food to eat, and an individual espresso maker.

And, this week, I'm thankful for I'll Be There by Holly Goldberg Sloan.

Genre: YA, I suppose (although I only think it falls under that umbrella because it has several young people in it)

In a nutshell: beautiful, gripping, thoughtful, and heart warming. 

First of all, look at this cover... I think it's the best one I've seen in years. If I could ask this cover out on a date, I'd think about it.

I don't often say I'm "thankful" to have discovered a particular book, but this one is very special. It is about two brothers who have nothing to cling to in life but each other until they move into a small town where a chance meeting changes the course of their lives. Sam, the oldest brother, goes into a church to hear some good music only to hear Emily singing terribly, so nervous that she latches onto his face in the back of the crowd to get through it. This is very much a story about connection: what happens when we reach out and touch each other's lives, even in seemingly small ways.

This is one of those rare reads that I am desperately trying to get everyone I know to read. It is so, so lovely and heartwarming despite its moments of terrible sadness. It made me cry, and it made me laugh loud enough to wake people. It made me so, so anxious to know what happens that I stayed up to some unacceptable hour to finish it. But I didn't want it to end, either. The relationship between the two brothers, Sam and Riddle, is touching and haunting. In fact every relationship in this book is pretty lovely to discover. The book has us skipping between all the character's thoughts, so we get to have access to pretty much every important perspective. The young voices are crafted so thoughtfully and so believably. And although there are things that made me angry and upset, I never found this story depressing. There is so much that is uplifting in it, and the sad moments only make those richer.

I know I haven't really told you what this book is about. I don't want to ruin it: you should get to experience it for yourself, and I highly recommend that you do.