*waves from the corner*

Nobody puts baby in a corner. HAHA — yeah, right.

I’ve been uberbusy, but I’ve been reading and writing as the mood takes me. Two books highly recommended: Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Graham Smith. *huge thumbs up*

I’m working on a project that’s alternating between the titles “The 4 Bitches of the Apocalypse” and “Four Sisters and a Funeral”, but… it’s taking it’s sweet time.

And now I’m off to bed.

Tags: book wars, i read it (and it was awesome!), it's a miracle! (aka I wrote shit)

Smart Bitches rule the world

No, seriously, Smart Bitches rule the world. *cough* Margaret Thatcher, anybody? */cough*

In this case, I’m referring to Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan of smartbitchestrashybooks.com. Their book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, hit shelves less than 2 weeks ago, and through much pain, I secured my copy and have poured over it with glee.

Let me put it this way: if all genre guides were this funny and insightful at the same time, more people would give a crap. The Bitches leave no stones unturned in dismantling and beating the crap out of all of the common romance novel stereotypes/cliches (seekrit babiez, simultaneous orgasms, mullets & man-titty, raep forced seduction, etc.), and making us laugh at them and ourselves in the process.

There are statements of literary minds as to why we identify with certain plotlines, as well as mockeries of the irresistible Magical Hoo Hoo and the Wang of Mighty Lovin’, and everything inbetween.

I was particularly enamoured with the language of critical distinction: about the only thing that didn’t arrive in a timely manner was usage of the term “fucknuts”. My favorite parts were the “choose your own romance” and “write your own romance novel using these convenient stereotypical plotlines of do00m!!!1!”, because, damn it, I was laughing my ass off. I think I lost five pounds just from all the laughter; laughter is not only the best medicine: it’s also fucking great exercise!

The verdict: if you don’t buy this book, or at least borrow it from the library for the chapter on cover snark and man-titty, you’re an idiot.

Tags: I can't believe I read the whole thing (and survived)!

WTF, Borders?

WTF, Borders, indeed.

They didn’t have the following:
The Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman
Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to MANTITTY Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan

OR any of the other assorted things I was jonesing for.

So, really, Borders, if you want me to use your stinking 30% off, good only in-store, coupons, PLEASE TO BE HAVING THE SHIT I WANT WHEN I WANT IT.

I wound up with Cleopatra’s Perfume by Jina Bacarr instead. Not what I was looking for, but… *sigh*

BORDERS!FAIL. EPIC!BORDERS!FAIL!

(And in lesser news, I am writing. *pats self on the back*)

Tags: it's a miracle! (aka I wrote shit), wtf borders?

Amazon Rank

Tags: book wars

…orlynao?

I’ve been sitting on this for a few days because it made me so irritated that I needed to fully mull out in my mind what exactly made me so angry. Now that I have done just that, I have to share it.

I follow a writer on my Twitter account, and she recently tweeted that she was going to stop writing/participating in online forums until she’s written something someone wants to read. My immediate response was, “You’re published. STFU and STFD.”

It took me a while to understand why I had that reaction.

An author doesn’t serve their audience, they serve the story. If they think that writing for a specific set of people is a guarantee that the story will be good, they’re sadly mistaken. An author’s wanting to please their audience =/= a perfect (or even a good) story. Trying to please other people is like trying to paddle upriver with a hockey stick; it isn’t going to happen.

Stephenie Meyer wrote the Twilight series as her own personal whatever. I’m not saying that they’re good or anything, but you can tell that she poured herself into them and that effort served the stories. If she had been writing them to cater to the fans, there would be a whole different level of crap in them. (Not saying that they aren’t crap anyway, but that’s my personal opinion and not necessarily relevent.)

If you think that writing begins and ends with the story, then moves directly on to someone buying the book and publishing it, that’s… totally not true. And kind of insane. It’s a lot of work to make everything work. I still haven’t gotten there. I may never get there. But if I do, I’m not going to forget that I serve the story.

The story = GOD.

And if I am so lucky as to get published in any way, I’m not going to get huffy and flouncy because “no one wants to read my stuff”. I don’t write for the elusive audience that may or may not exist; I write to get the damn story out of my head so I can sleep.

I don’t know how much of this makes sense. It’s been a long day.

Tags: book wars, holy crap

a book is a book is a book

So, okay, everyone knows I’m a Reader. I devour books and spit them back out. I own entirely too many books and I’m always collecting more because, let’s face it, READING IS GOOD.

That being said, there’s a break in my brain right now.

E-books and regular books.

I know that regular books kill forests and that kind of bugs me, but at the same time, I love the feeling of a book in my hands. I like knowing that I can just put a bookmark in when my hands/wrists fall asleep and it will still be there when I come back to it. I love the smell of the ink on the paper, the weight and substance of the book in my hands. It’s something I’ve become accustomed to and expect.

E-books, while more convenient being in the digital platform (no killing of trees for paper, no fading of ink due to the book sitting in the sun, and so on), just… don’t feel right. They’re more awkward for me, because I read so quickly, and sometimes, the down arrow on my computers can’t keep up. They also don’t have that comfort factor that I associate with physically substantive books (the smell, the physicality, etc.), and they’re just as expensive as going out, killing a few trees, and having a real book.

So I’m torn.

Can we leave it at ‘a book is a book is a book’?

Tags: book wars

oddity of nature

I do my best writing at night. At the end of the day, when I’ve had time to relax and unwind and process all of the thoughts going through my brain, I can clear everything and start to write. But if anything is out of whack or unbalanced, I can’t even rub two words together and get a turnip.

Today, I was sick all day; fever, chills, stomachache, the works. And yet, I’ve managed to pull a couple hundred words of nonsense out of my ass and slap them into Word. I also spread the love by sending out submissions.

A totally unproductive day, yet… I can’t help but feel that I did something.

Tags: holy crap, it's a miracle! (aka I wrote shit)

so, anyway…

Can’t there be a way to wire my brain into Word so I wouldn’t have to sit and type?

Tags: I wrote a novel and all I have now is writer's block..., the procrastinator is on call

procrastinating…

I could be writing right now, but I’m twitching a bit about work tomorrow, so I’m sitting in front of the television (Food Network!) with a cat named Gaz on my lap.

Tags: the procrastinator is on call

Instant Attraction? How about not?

So, I saw a review of Instant Attraction by Jill Shalvis over on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and I acquired a copy at ye olde local Borders. It took me a couple of days to actually start reading the book because the first chapter made me want to carry the book back to the store and return it.

The official description of the book is thus:

Accountant Katie Kramer is a quintessential good girl – working hard, recycling diligently, all the while trying to ignore the feeling that she doesn’t fit in anywhere. That’s all she wants. Well, that – and amazing sex, and the kind of daredevil escapade she can look back on when she’s crunching numbers in a dusty cubicle. Which explains why she just took a job in Wishful, California, working for Wilder Adventures and Expeditions. Waking up to find a magnificently built stranger towering over her bed – that part defies explanation…After wandering the planet for months following a life-changing accident, Cameron Wilder has come back to the only home he knows. Under other circumstances, he might be thrilled to find a gorgeous woman sleeping in his cabin, but now, while he’ll risk his body taking clients on adrenaline-drenched excursions, his heart is off limits. Still, Katie’s killer smile triggers something deep in his gut…among other places. Showing her how exhilarating it can be to stop balancing her life as if it was a check book is the biggest rush he’s ever felt – and an adventure Katie’s wishing would never end…

…okay, then. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the matter. Katie is traumatized by an accident where she was the only survivor of a collapsed bridge. She thinks that living life to its fullest is going to be her only chance of making a difference, so she’s doing all this crazy stuff she’s never done before and “overcoming” and “dealing with” her panic and so on. Cam is also dealing with accident fallout, except his accident was the result of his own stupidity and not paying fucking attention when careening down a fucking snow-covered cliff.

(Can you tell I don’t connect with these characters at all?)

The story is well and good enough (boy meets girl, boy screws girl, they fight, etc., get together in the end…), the grammatics and composition are good enough, but I just could not get into the story. And, then at the end, Katie walks into her apartment to find Cam naked in her bed.

Am I supposed to believe that she wouldn’t be calling the cops and have him frisked for her missing keys? Because, really, that’s just… no. Do not want. It’s not romantic at all to have your privacy invaded by someone — god forbid there’s an explanation in the story of how he got into the bed in the first place.

All in all: okay book, not my cuppa, and crazy!stalker!Cam! needs to go away before he starts to sparkle like Edward Cullen. (Eeeeew.)

Tags: I can't believe I read the whole thing (and survived)!