Blog Chain: Snippets of Me

Kate, who like me, is inspired by the photos and quotes and memes people post online, started this blog chain with a fun topic:

Post pictures, songs, movie clips, poems, or novel excerpts that make you feel. Feel what, you ask? Feel anything. Happy. Sad. Angry. Nostalgic. Hopeful. Hopeless. Jealous. Joyful. 

I have read in several different places that YA novelist John Green said of his latest novel, The Fault In Our Stars that he wants to make his readers "Feel All The Things." I would love that someone could go through this blog chain and through what we all choose to post have that same Feel All The Things feeling.

Cool, huh? Michelle M's post is here, and Margie will post after me. Now, here come the feelings in a nostalgic tidal wave of unicorns...

"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea..."

The Hideaway I long to read this amazing book again in...

The hideaway I can afford (sans fireplace, gold teapot and pricey bolsters)...

Thinking of that makes me a little sad. But not as teary-eyed as this makes me:

"Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.


Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love."

Even sadder...

And now, to turn your frown upside-down (not mine, but my sweet Greynell looked just like this once upon a time):

Another childhood favorite (without the drawings of Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl's work just wouldn't be as memorable for me):

Just for snarfs (and to boldly speak the harsh, rubberized truth):

To be fair, I need to counter that with this:

I suppose that includes Crocs. Hmph. ;)

Finally, just in case you were wondering what tea you should be drinking (since tea always makes me feel joyful)...

Streamlined... Well, A Little, Anyway

Lately I've been focusing on streamlining my life. Sort of a New Year's Resolution, only I can't call it that or it won't get done.

Anyway, I've noticed that little steps lead to lots of saved time in the long run. Over the years, I've frittered away more time than I can imagine, just trying to navigate the blogs I follow.

I use the Blogger Dashboard, which is great, but makes it difficult to find a particular blog... well, it does when you discover you're trying to scroll through 360+ blogs. O_o? Being the time waster that I am, I figured it would be interesting to see just how many blogs I could drop, for one reason or another. (anything to procrastinate to keep from writing, right? :P )

So I clicked on manage followed blogs, and systematically, and with the judicious help of extra internet tabs, discovered that many of the blogs no longer existed. Yes, I was as surprised as you are. At least a dozen of them were just gone.

Another large chunk hadn't posted since the third quarter of 2011, and posted sporadically before that. If it was a blogger I had no rapport with, had never exchanged emails or couldn't remember any of their previous posts, I unfollowed.

Another reason I unfollowed certain blogs was that they were now invite only, so in the interest of time and ruthless streamlining, I hit unfollow. I didn't remember any exchanges I'd had with any of these bloggers, so I just didn't sweat it.

By the time I'd finished the alphabet (Wish I would have realized that my blog would be lumped with the T's instead of the L's when I named it. Duh.), I was down to 315. So some 50 blogs were just clogging up my reader, when I only really regularly read about a hundred. Not a huge number, but close to a sixth of the blogs I was reading, which seems like a lot more.

Now if I could only apply this streamlining to the rest of my life. Need to start using my phone to remind me of things, like I always swear I'm going to do (like blog-chain posts). Or maybe change my outgoing voicemail message to something with my voice, instead of that scary computer lady reading my phone number back to you. But first, maybe I'd better clear off the huge pile of mail that's accumulated on my desk. It's mostly junk mail, anyway. ;) Baby steps.

What about y'all? Have you done anything to help streamline your life lately? Even if it's only a little thing? They do add up!

Blog Chain: The Spaces we Remember

This Blog Chain post was started by Jon, who asked...

Imagine the home(s) where you grew up, and start drawing a floor plan. As you draw, memories will surface. Grab onto one of those memories and tell us a story.

You see, the thing is, we moved around a lot when I was a kid. Like, every three years. So my homes were always different, but somehow, always the same. Army housing all starts to look alike after a while. But the school I went to when I lived in Germany was an old building with a ton of twists and turns and a huge, romantic library. A building that always pops up in my imagination when I'm reading, and sometimes when I'm writing. Its halls have doubled for Hogwarts, stood in for myriad halls and castles from Elizabethan England to Middle Earth.
 
Halloween was the best, when the teachers and parents would create a haunted house that sprawled throughout the library and down a high-ceilinged hall. My mother and I were both vampires on the year that most colors my memories. Somehow cheap polyester spiderwebs and black plastic had transformed my school into an unrecognizable house of horrors, with scary music and floating wisps of smoke. I held my mother's hand tighter, despite how strange it felt in the white gloves she was wearing. Bats, rats, snakes, all closed in around us.

Something moved in the shadows and something huge and black lunged toward us. A man with a white face and a shiny black cape. I screamed, and hid my face in my mothers arms and she laughed and told me not to be afraid. Then she carried me all the way through the haunted house and no one else bothered us. I thought she was invincible, and nothing could harm her. I was six. ;)

See what space Christine posted about before me, and what Margie posts next!

Five Pentacle Review: A Million Suns, by Beth Revis

I know, I know, the last book I reviewed also got five pentacles. What can I say? I've been reading a lot of fabulous books lately. And A Million Suns, the second book in the Across the Universe trilogy, is no exception.

Without giving anything away for anyone who hasn't read it or Across the Universe, this book was everything I hoped it would be, and more. Between the fast paced chapters, the tantalizing ending, and a plot thicker than Southern gravy, it was unputdownable. I finished it in a matter of hours, and now I feel like if I don't find out what happens next I'll die!

Throughout the story you're constantly second-guessing what you know—or think you know—based on the clues Amy and Elder discover. Clues left predominantly by the last person they would expect to help them. And the last person they trust. If you cared about the characters at all in Across the Universe, you'll grow to love them even more in A Million Suns. I know I did. So much so that I had to email Beth and tell her how much I enjoyed reading it. Yeah, I'm a shameless fangirl like that. ;)

Can't Blog...

Reading A Million Suns. ;)

WIP Wednesday: Candy Bar Scenes and Writing on Trains

Is it sad that I'm looking forward to the time off I have between Christmas and New Year's even more than I'm looking forward to Christmas? :P

My husband has to work, I have no family nearby and all my friends will be spending the holiday with their families. So that leaves me with no excuses:

I WILL finish my revisions of The Lost Days of Evangeline Cowen (the novel formerly known as Evangeline)

I WILL add at least another 10K words to my WIP.

I'm even making plans to utilize my time better, like spending my weekdays drafting, and then revising during the weekends.

But a part of me knows that the lure of books and television and internet will also be strong when I'm home by myself. So I'm swearing to keep the TV and WIFI off, and will likely have to make my husband hide my nook. ;)

I really want to achieve my goals, but after spending so long on these projects, the motivation's just not there. I'm going to have to ratchet up the incentive.

One way to do this is by plotting out some "candy bar" scenes for my WIP. Scenes I've plotted in my head, but haven't quite reached yet in the draft. Usually this works to push me forward, to keep writing.

Then there are candy bars of a more literal type. :) Chocolaty goodness (mmm... special dark...) works okay to bribe me into finishing a scene, but an hour break at the nearby sushi bar for lunch works even better. Though I prefer to do my typing in isolation, an hour with my notebook in a busier atmosphere sometimes helps me plot better.

With so much writing to do and sushi to eat, there won't be much time for blogging, I'm afraid, so this will be my last post of 2011. :(

But I'll be back refreshed and ready to go in 2012, with my revisions finished and my WIP that much closer to a complete first draft. Until then, here's a question I'd like to leave you with:

If you had the time and money for a writing retreat, what would it be like?

For me, I'd like to board a train and travel out west, to Utah, maybe where my WIP is set, and spend most of the trip writing. Trains are important to my novel, so it would be a research trip, as well. I could think of worse ways to spend the holidays, actually.

How 'bout you?

And Happy Holidays, y'all!

Five Pentacle Review: Kimberly Derting's The Pledge

I love to be able to give a book five stars. It means that the writing, the world and the characters completely captivated me. The latest YA novel that's completely won me over—I literally have nothing bad to say about this book, and a whole lotta good—is Kimberly Derting's The Pledge.

Though I enjoyed her debut novel The Body Finder, it wasn't until I read The Pledge that I became a squeeing Derting fangirl. It's dystopian with hints of an epic fantasy world-view, and just enough magic to make Tere a very happy girl. Here's the blurb on Goodreads, where you can find more reviews:

In the violent country of Ludania, the classes are strictly divided by the language they speak. The smallest transgression, like looking a member of a higher class in the eye while they are speaking their native tongue, results in immediate execution. Seventeen-year-old Charlaina has always been able to understand the languages of all classes, and she's spent her life trying to hide her secret. The only place she can really be free is the drug-fueled underground clubs where people go to shake off the oppressive rules of the world they live in. It's there that she meets a beautiful and mysterious boy named Max who speaks a language she's never heard before . . . and her secret is almost exposed.

Charlie is intensely attracted to Max, even though she can't be sure where his real loyalties lie. As the emergency drills give way to real crisis and the violence escalates, it becomes clear that Charlie is the key to something much bigger: her country's only chance for freedom from the terrible power of a deadly regime.

Doesn't that sound amazing?!

I adored Charlie as a heroine. She is real, and flawed, and vulnerable. But she learns to do what she has to in order to protect her sister, and keep herself safe. She's a survivor, and I love that about her.

Like The Body Finder, The Pledge is told from multiple points of view, with Charlie telling her tale in first person, with the other povs (including that Max, and of the evil, ancient, power-mad queen) in third person. Max's pov passages give an insight into a fairly complex and complicated young man. The more you learn about his family, the more interesting his character becomes. 

I think that the format works even better here than in TBF. Gives it that epic fantasy vibe, while still maintaining an intimate relationship with Charlie and her secrets. Without spoiling the story, she and her family have quite a few of them, many unbeknownst to her and her adorable little sister.

But that epic fantasy feel is countered by scenes of modernity, like when Charlaina and her friend go out to a sort of "pop-up" nightclub/rave. The clandestine and fugitive nature of these clubs fuels the dystopian vibe, and makes the perfect setting for the intrigue that follows. And by the time all hell breaks loose, your concern for Charlie and her family will have you reading at breakneck pace to race to the end.

While the turnout of the final conflict might have been the tiniest bit predictable, in my opinion it was the only way to end. But there was some lingering creepiness that made for some extremely satisfying final pages. So to say I enjoyed this read would be an understatement. After The Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and Goliath, this was one of the most satisfying YA reads for me this year.

I hope you'll check out the other reviews on Goodreads and not just mine, but if you like a fast-paced dystopian with a hint of magic, this one's for you. If you liked The Body Finder, you'll most likely love The Pledge.

Read it yet? Let me know what y'all thought!