Avast, me hearties!
Sad news — my NaNo attempts have, once again, failed epicly. I was doing really well the first couple of days … and then it was Monday and there was work to be done, and … long story short, my NaNo dreams are rapidly dissolving. I’ll still tap out some words whenever I get the chance, but 50k seems tragically out of reach at the moment. Noooooooes!
That’s all for now. Back to work. Write on!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/PGT0r
Remember how I lost my flip cam and therefore couldn’t do any more vlogs? Well, I found it! It was hiding under Tibbers, my enormous teddy bear.
Thus, without further ado, my new vlog!
Important note: The book being reviewed below is the sequel to Catskinner’s Book.
The Book
Cannibal Hearts
The Genre
Sci-fi / Mystery
The Author
Misha Burnett has been writing poetry and fiction for around forty years. During this time he has supported himself and his family with a variety of jobs, including locksmith, cab driver, and building maintenance.
The Plot
A year ago James Ozryck was a loner, forced to keep the world at bay by the alien entity he calls Catskinner who shares his body. Now he has found a community of others whose lives have been changed by the Outsiders.
Along with Godiva, his half-human lover, James runs a property management company that serves as a front company for Outsider activities.
When the pair’s mysterious boss, Agony Delapour suddenly shows up in town with a new project, however, things gets dangerous fast as events unfold that threaten the life that they have made.
The Review
Despite its admittedly dark and gritty nature, I had a lot of fun reading this book. It’s a great sequel to Burnett’s first novel, Catskinner’s Book, and I especially liked that all the characters I enjoyed in the first book made their way into the second book. One of my personal favorites is the red vixen, Miss Agony Delapour, who played a minor and terrifying role in the first book, but happily gets much more screen time in the sequel.
One theme I really like that runs through the series is that we’re never quite sure what’s going on with everything. We’ve got our protagonist and his associates, who are actually more bad than good, some of whom try to actively do good things and fail, while others are clearly bad but just happen to be working with good people for their own nefarious purposes. And we’ve got our antagonist, who’s the dictionary definition of “mysterious” – we don’t know who he is or what he’s planning, beside the fact that he’s apparently trying to kill off the protagonist. And the fate of the antagonist is just brilliant. You’ll have to read to find out what it is!
All in all, a thrilling read! I recommend you check this out if you’re a fan of sci-fi, thrillers, or mysteries.
The Rating
Five out of five blood-encrusted stars.
Check out Cannibal Hearts here!
Unrelated media of the day:
This is a really cool game my brother showed me the other day. It’s really off the wall and bizarre, so check it out if you have a few spare moments and want a nice escape from reality!
Human creativity never ceases to amaze me — as opposed to dolphin creativity, which is frankly old hat and I don’t know why they even bother anymore.
Hehehe. All kidding aside, my friend Audra (or am I supposed to keep your identity secret? TOO LATE!!!) linked me to a very cool article about a new book marketing concept they’re trying in Australia (and possibly elsewhere). The idea is that … well, I’ll borrow the image from the article to give you an idea:
Basically, they wrap up books in brown paper, write vague details of what the book is about, and add a price tag. It’s a book blind date! Instead of being swayed by author name or book cover or whatever, you judge the book entirely based on the five keywords.
Now, obviously this could allow for you to pick up a lot of duds, especially if you’re a picky reader. But I think it sounds kind of fantastic. I can only imagine how many really amazing books I’ve missed out on because I didn’t like the covers (and I’m very much a judge-the-book-by-it’s-cover kind of person).
I’m not sure this concept can really be applied to self-published ebook authors, but … still a neat concept, don’t you think? And if anyone does come up with a way to exploit this idea in the ebook scene, feel free to let me in on the secret!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/rS6X0
Today’s post is a rumination on that fickle mistress, Typing. Specifically, the typing that occurs when you spend days and days slaving away writing out a scene by hand in your notebook, and then begin copying said scene onto your computer.
Intellectually, this should be the easiest thing in the world. Take what’s written, copy it word for word into the Word doc, save the file, and call it a day. But like many writers, I am a perfectionist. As I type each word, I think to myself, “Is this the best word? Surely there’s a more eloquent way to communicate Bob the Elephant’s intense hatred for fancy cheese trays.” And then the re-writing begins.
A simple task that should have taken a mere fifteen minutes now develops into three arduous hours of typing, deleting, typing, deleting, flipping through notebook pages to make sure I didn’t say something similar later in the scene, more typing, more deleting … MADNESS! UTTER MADNESS!
Of course, the net result is that the scene turns out far superior to how I had it written down in my notebook. But it makes me wonder … if I had skipped the notebook step and gone straight to computer, how differently would the scene have turned out? Would it have ended differently, had I not used my first, hand-written run at the scene to work out the kinks? Would it be worse? Better? Exactly the same?
These musings were brought to you by my cold cup of peppermint tea, which languished in winter’s icy chill due to the fact that I forgot about it and left it sitting on the counter for thirty minutes.
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/YN85rHp
Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your hats, because I’m about to drop a bombshell that specializes in blowing hats off people’s heads. And that bombshell, my friends, is that …
Everyone still hatted? Excellent.
I don’t remember much about last year’s NaNo, a fact which leads me to assume that I failed spectacularly at creating the necessary 50k words to achieve ULTIMATE VICTORY!
This year, however, will be different. I came up with a kicka** idea yesterday in the shower, and I’m getting pretty psyched about writing it. It’s going to involve college, superheroes, and (potentially) evil twins. I’m thinking it’s going to end up being some sort of sci-fi thriller mystery combo, which will be fun, as I’ve never attempted such a genre before. It’s also going to be quite dark, which I’ve dabbled with in the past and had quite a lot of fun with, despite it not being my usual cheery style.
The tentative title I’m going with is “The Nemesis Contract”, which I think sounds suitably menacing. There’s a mini-series of comics that share that name, but as far as I know, titles can’t be copyrighted. Is that correct?
So I will officially be participating in NaNo this year. I can’t promise I’ll succeed, or even get past the first few days, but I’ll definitely give it a shot. I’ve gotten woefully behind on my writing these days, and I figure NaNo’s a good way to get back on the literary horse (whom I have named “Diction-neigh-ry”).
All aboard the NaNo train!!! Who’s with me?
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/4LlH8JR
Hey everyone! I don’t have much time right now, so I’ll just cut to the chase — I ran across this free online course (https://iversity.org/c/6?r=103aa) called “The Future of Storytelling”, and it looks really great for any and all writers, including yours truly.
It’s 8 weeks long, and the basic format is weekly videos plus lots of opportunity for interaction with other students. They’re going to cover topics like:
Anyway, it looks pretty darn useful — and fun! — so here’s the link again if you want to check it out:
https://iversity.org/c/6?r=103aa
Oh yes, and in other free news, the talented Misha Burnett will be offering his ebooks for free on Amazon this weekend, so click here to get a sneak preview:
http://mishaburnett.wordpress.com/buy-my-book/
That is all.
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/hdTRQ
200 downloads on The Coin Collector! Booya! I believe this means that people have officially downloaded my short story more than my debut novel. Ah well. The short story is short, not to mention free, so I suppose it makes sense. Still, happy day! Round numbers are awesome.
Speaking of short stories, a lovely lady in my writing critique group just published a short story called Chameleon – check it out here. I’ve only read the preview thus far, but it looked pretty darn good, so check it out if you’re looking for a quick read of the sci-fi/action/spy thriller variety!
In other news … yeah, I have no other news. Well, actually, I have officially started re-writes for Chasing Nonconformity. Two paragraphs down, several hundred to go! I stuck my notebook back in my bathroom and took out all the books so that I have no choice but to write during my morning … let’s call it a “sojourn”.
I also have a question for all you WordPress-literate types. My page views and “likes” have been down in recent months, mostly due to me being very lugubrious in my posting frequency, but I still get a few new people following my blog every day. So, no raise in views/likes … but new followers every day. Very suspicious. Any thoughts on this bizarre phenomenon? A mass conspiracy by the internet to mess with me? An unintended and inexplicable result of the recent American government shutdown? Could the United Platypus Alliance be involved?
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/s4iVkXA
I’m really annoyed by this. I brought my FlipCam to the Argyle Arts Festival, where I had a booth back in August to sell Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It, and I got a decent bit of footage from said event. I don’t remember if I mentioned the Argyle festival on my blog, but basically it was a medium success. I only sold 3 books, but I did trade one book for another local author’s book, and then I traded another book for some handmade soap and body butter. So not much in terms of sales, but lots in terms of swag!
Anyhoo, I’ve since misplaced my video camera, hence the appalling lack of vlogs. There are few things in life I enjoy more than babbling into a camera (Note: that was a blatant lie), and now I can’t even do that! Horror, thy name is my inability to replace objects from whence they came!
So that’s essentially why there haven’t been any vlogs for a while. Ah well.
On the writing front, still working away at Chasing Nonconformity. I’ve got the timeline worked out properly now, so at least my characters will be in the right places at the right times. Now to just get everything slotted into place.
I’ve also been toying around with a new short story concept, which would be called “The Dusk Bugs”. It would be based off my recent walking trip through the “Banana Kingdom”, a long stretch of pavement in a swampy area that someone has spray painted a bunch of bananas on. I made the mistake of walking through the Banana Kingdom at dusk, and there were … well, not to ruin the ending, but there were a fair amount of bugs. Terror ensued. I think it will make for an underwhelmingly thrilling tale. Stay tuned!
Unrelated link of the day:
The Harry Potter-themed series of gifs is titled: “No … no no no, I wasn’t ready for feels today!”
Big news! Last night I accidentally got elected VP of the London Writer’s Society. Well, not technically “accidentally”, but close enough to count. Here’s what happened …
So my local writer’s society is really great — we go on handgun field trips, have great critique groups, listen to interesting and informed lecturers at our general meetings, etc. etc. The thing is, elections for the exec board are in September every year, and all positions decided to step down this year … leaving all the exec spots open. For some reason no one in the society wants to be an exec, which led to the former VP basically bribing me into becoming VP on the promise that all I have to do is attend general meetings, exec meetings, and sometimes answer emails.
Und hence, I am now the VP! Huzzah!
Of course, immediately after the meeting concluded, a member hurried over to me and started asking about assorted VP-related matters. To which I had to shame-facedly say, “Actually, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on at all yet, so … yeah, sorry.” It was awkward. But she was really nice about my incompetence and congratulated me on my new post, so it all worked out.
I had another brief panic attack when the former treasurer came up to myself and the new treasurer and started talking finances, handed over the PO box keys, etc. My panic attack was due to the fact that I’m staggeringly irresponsible at the best of times, and I just knew I’d lose the keys the second they got into my possession. Luckily the new treasurer is far more competent than I, and she accepted the keys and the stacks of financial folders with a confident smile. I fully intend to ride her coattails to glory.
So basically I’m hoping that this new VP position will mostly involve me being a figurehead, and then the president and treasurer can be the real power behind the writer’s society. Mine would be a ceremonial position, if you will. I’ll probably get roped into organizing at least a few events, because that’s just what happens when you get involved with something, but hopefully I’ll pull through and said events won’t be a complete disaster.
Well, that’s all that’s new in my life! Anyone got any exciting news to share? Writing-related is great, but I’ll also accept anything involving a new pet, passing a test, getting promoted, going to the supermarket wearing real clothes (i.e. not sweat pants), etc. Share away!
Unrelated media of the day:
Source: http://imgur.com/gallery/l32HFPg
Michelle Proulx - Author 