These are all told visually, as if a page in a graphic novel. Some variants are mostly visual variations or silly changes to fill the "99 ways". But others are more significant - changes in point of view, in perspective, in genre. Some are homages to other comics.
I plan to bring this book to my writing group to spark an exercise, where we tell the story in words (prose or poetry). I think it will be interesting to see what people come up with.
While visiting my mother, I took a look at some of my old YA books. I've been playing with the idea of Mysterious Paris as a YA novel. Some books were completely the wrong idea - protagonist too young, or just not the right atmosphere at all.
Summer of my German Soldier is fairly different from what I'm trying to do with Mysterious Paris, but it was brilliant, and I couldn't put it down. I'll have to read it again, to figure out where it hooked me.
I'll have to get some recent YA from the library.
Now that I can cross-post excerpts of my Vox posts to LJ, I'll try to
do better with posting thoughts on books I've been reading. I'll still
do that on Vox (because I like the ease of adding the boook cover to
the post, and how my thoughts are linked to other vox blogger posts on
the same book), but now those of you without Vox accounts can find out
from your LJ friends list.
In honor of nanowrimo, I changed my theme. Yes, I'll be writing a new novel, but if you want to read how that's going, you'll have to check out my LJ account.
I have been reading books, but haven't been blogging about them. I don't think that will get better in November.
I expected to love Blood and Iron. I loved Elizabeth Bear's science fiction trillogy (Hammered, Scardown, Worldwired) so much that I gave it as a gift to several people. And I love urban fantasy.
Unfortunately, I didn't love Blood and Iron. The story was
interesting, and the characters intriguing. But somehow they just
didn't grip me. Only in a few places (mostly in the final 25%) did I
care so much that I couldn't stop reading.
Blood and Iron is about the ongoing war between fairy and humankind, and about key emotionally damaged people involved in this war. Part urban fantasy, part twisted Arthurian legend, it twists everything fairy into it's own story.
I think the problem was that I didn't care much about the main character (Elaine Andraste) until far into the book. For much of the book, I didn't see her as having a goal or a specific problem to overcome.
But it is quite cool what Elizabeth Bear does with
fairy tales, especially with the Arthurian legend. I might check out
the next book in this series, Whiskey and Water, because the implied main character of that book already intrigues me. And I'll definitely pick up her next science fiction - Carnival.
I just realized that Vox has a collection of
stock photos that you can insert into posts. Yes, not all of them are
actually photos.
So I decided to play around and check them out. First I searched for photos that remind me of some of my friends on Vox.
And then I decided to look for other images.
Can you guess who or what I'm thinking of? Perhaps I'm a little too obvious.
It's fun to nest photos.
Except if you accidentally end up typing behind a photo. I thought of seeing if Vox would let the photos get cut off the page. But then you couldn't see as many of them. And what would be the
in that? And what't the difference between a small and medium sized stock photo?
It's about books, so I figured that I might as well post here..... although it's a little harder, as Vox doesn't allow copy/paste of HTML code.
I am participating in a blogging experiment hosted at dearauthor.com. To enter the contest, put up this blurb, image, and trackback and you are entered to win the following prize package.
- $200 Amazon gift certificate
- Signed copy of Slave to Sensation
- New Zealand goodies chosen by Singh
- ARC of Christine Feehan's October 31 release: Conspiracy Game
You can read about the experiment here and you can download the code that you need to participate here.
SLAVE TO SENSATION
Nalini Singh
Berkley / September 2006
Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers
of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart.
Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has
cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous
insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their
brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories
destroyed.
Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves
sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds
collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas
and Sascha must remain bound to their identities�or sacrifice everything for a taste
of darkest temptation.
Excerpt
This photo came from a webcam at africam several years ago. I don't know if the site is still running, but I was addicted for a while.
Thanks to pbray on LiveJournal, I can now make my own motivational posters. You can too, at http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/motivator.php
This book is about someone with the weirdest family ever. Seriously - his father is a mountain, his mother is a washing machine, one of his brothers is an island, and another is a set of 3 nesting dolls.
When I started this book, I couldn't get into it and thought I might not finish it. I couldn't relate to the story of Allen's family, and I wasn't overly enthusiastic about his plans to create free internet access throughout Toronto.
But I stuck with the book, as it wasn't bad and eventually I started liking it. It really clicked for me when it got into his attempts to be normal and fit in with normal society. At that point I could put up with the super-weird family, because I felt they existed to make his background weirder than anyone real ever.
