Living the Fictional Dream

While on vacation in Sedona, I read two novels by Karen Macinerney — her “tales of an urban werewolf,” Howling at the Moon and On the Prowl. This series is about a werewolf named Sophie Garou who lives in Austin, Texas. Sophie has lived all of her life trying to keep her “hairy problem” a secret from everyone she knows, and juggling her normal life as an auditor with wolfsbane tea and a mother who owns a magic shop and is a little psychic.

Overall, I enjoyed these books (thanks to writing group mate Sandra who loaned them to me!). They are fun urban fantasies with a strong female character. There are also charsimatic male characters (including a male werewolf named Tom and Sophie’s human boyfriend, Heath), and interesting supporting cast, like Sophie’s witch mom and her best friend Lindsey.

One facet of these novels is a mystery that has to be solved by the end of the installment. I wouldn’t call them mystery novels — the urban fantasy is much stronger with these stories as far as genre goes — but the mystery is there as a supporting element. Especially in the first book of the series.

In Howling at the Moon, Sophie’s mother is accused of murder, and she has to figure out who really did the dastardly deed. By the end of the novel, we have a suspect in hand, thanks to Sophie and Lindsey’s sleuthing, so it should be case closed. And it is, as far as the mystery goes.

However, at the end of the novel, I was unsatisfied with the conclusion of said mystery. We did meet the murderer earlier in the story, so it wasn’t completely out of nowhere, but said murderer was never on the list of possible suspects. Not even a tiny blip on the suspect radar. The only reason Sophie is tipped in the right direction was because she stumbled upon something magical, and her mother, who didn’t use that kind  of magic, sent Sophie to a different magic shop to find information. It just randomly happened that the magic shop Sophie visited happened to be run by a relative of the murderer.

The whole thing felt very random and happenstance. If Sophie had gone to any other magic shop in the whole city, she wouldn’t have been able to solve the mystery.

I think the mystery would have had a more satisfying conclusion if the muderer had been on the short list of suspects in the first place. As it was, Sophie spends a lot of time running about after suspects who are all red herrings, and even when the murder victim gives them a clue from his ghostly state, the clue turns out to be bunk — unrelated to his actual death.

I don’t want to be too harsh on the books, because I thought they were an enjoyable read, but my issues with the mystery in book one started me thinking about how mysteries are not a plot element that you can toss into a story willy-nilly. To make a mystery truly satisfying to the reader, you have to do the work. A twist ending is only awesome if, once you get the twist, it shows the whole rest of the novel in another light. All the clues have to be in place. A mystery is not satisfying if it comes out of left field.

Last night, with an unexpected windfall of birthday money (woo-hoo!), I picked up a couple of new books. One of my guilty pleasure series had a new release — Envy, book three in the Luxe series. Think Gossip Girl, but set in 1899 - 1900.

This series is interesting to me for how it combines “the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite” with the historical elements of the dawn of the twentieth century. Also, can you beat that cover art? The girls with the cascades of ruffly dresses are fairly spectacular. Only possibly the iconic images on the Twilight books beat out Luxe for cool covers.

This is fun, guilty pleasure reading. I don’t know that I’d recommend it to the world, but if you enjoy historical romance you’d probably enjoy these books.

But, on to my main point. Last night, while reading Envy, I noticed that the author tends to fall back on certain body parts in her descriptions. Foreheads are a big thing for this author — all the girls had smooth foreheads, large foreheads, sweat glistening on their foreheads, or hair sweeping becomingly across their foreheads…

And the other body part mentioned repeatedly was the girls’ clavicles. One girl had masculine clavicles. Dresses were always baring clavicles. And once, a guy actually thought specifically about how lovely a girl’s clavicles were.

Isn’t that odd? First of all, how often does one actually think about clavicles specifically. I notice necklines and busts and a woman’s form in general, but I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever looked at someone and thought, “Wow, what nice clavicles she has!” Foreheads, also, while I notice them as part of a person’s face, not a big seller on their own.

The thing I learned from this is that, while it can be interesting for an author to use something unique (or, perhaps, little used is a better term) when describing people in their stories, a little of this goes a long way. Give one character good clavicles, one character a lovely forehead, and leave it at that. A unique, defining characteristic can be a great way to make one character stand out in your readers’ minds, but when it’s clavicles, clavicles everywhere, it gets kind of absurd!

I must admit that I avoided Richelle Mead’s Y/A series for a while. I think it was the name — Vampire Academy. It sounded so… silly. Not the concept. The Casts pull of the concept of a high school for vampires in their House of Night series for a very intriguing series. But the name Vampire Academy just sounded so lame that I didn’t even want to pick the book off the shelf for the longest time. But, earlier this week, I finally did and bought the first two books in the series — Vampire Academy and Frostbite — and I can say with all honesty that they were very good.

It’s getting hard to walk through the Y/A section of any bookstore these days without running into a new series of what I lovingly call Y/A vampire crack. Vampires have always been popular characters, but these days they are springing off the shelves in a million new incarnations. A sign of the popularity of the Twilight series, perhaps?

Either way, now you can read about vampires at the House of Night; St. Vladimir’s Vampire Academy; in Forks, Washington; in NYC in Melissa de la Cruz’s Blue Bloods series; in Scott Westerfield’s parasitic Peeps series, and more. They’ve even released L.J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries series in a posh new cover — that series was all the rage when I was actually a teen — it was one of the few good alternatives to Christopher Pike. I’ve even seen a Y/A vampire book with a beach and a setting sun on the cover, of all things — haven’t checked that one out yet.

As far as this type of series goes, despite the silly title, Vampire Academy is one of the better ones. It has an interesting interpretation of vampire life. In this ‘verse, there are living vampires, Moroi, who need a small amount of blood and regular food, who are mortal, and who have enhanced sense and magic powers; there are vampire/human hybrids, the dhampir, who have the best of both human and Moroi powers — strength, stamina, ability to be in the sunlight, no need for blood, fighting skills. but no magic; and there are the Strigoi — dead/immortal vampires that kill humans, Moroi, and humans alike, drink only blood, and are super strong and fast.

The main character is Rose, a dhampir, who is bound by a mental link (rare among Moroi and their dhampir guardians) to her best friend, Lissa, a Moroi. They left the school and lived on their own for two years when Lissa was in trouble, but book one of the series begins when the school’s guardians finally find them and bring them home.

These books are an interesting mix of high school life — snobby girls, clique politics, mean teachers, and crushes — and the adult side of vampire life — political struggles, ostracism, and family — and Rose and Lissa’s attempts to navigate both. And, there is plenty of eye-candy (a.k.a., love interests) for both Rose and Lissa — a staple of any high school Y/A series.

One thing I really appreciate about this series is how each installment ends with closure. A lot of Y/A series these days don’t do that — each novel merely the next chapter of the larger plot, so to speak, instead of having its own plot (in addition to the larger plot of the series) with its own closure.

The first Vampire Academy novel deals with Rose and Lissa’s return to school, what they find there, and resolution of why they had to leave in the first place. The second novel, Frostbite, concerns a new level of attacks by a band of Strigoi, and most of it takes place at a posh ski resort frequented by the wealthy Moroi. The Moroi are definitely the Gossip Girl class of vampires in this ‘verse — especially those in the 12 royal families, of which Lissa is one.

Finally, Rose is a great narrator/main character. So much Y/A and chick lit these days is written in the first person that I’m gaining a better appreciation for it. It’s stil not my favorite POV, but I like it more than I used to. And Rose’s POV is an interesting perspective of her world. She’d has enough time on her own and with Lissa to have a view on that life, but at her heart she is a dhampir guardian, with the strength and loyalty that entails.

Rose is strong and resourceful, and her mental bond with Lissa is both unusual and powerful; however, at least thus far, Rose has not strayed down the Anita Blake/Bella (in Breaking Dawn) Mary Sue/unbelievable powers kind of way. Rose is even more down to earth and natural than super priestess-in-training Zoey Redbird of the House of Night series.

So, overall, I would say if you enjoy some of the proliferation of Y/A vampire novels, this series would be a great one to check out. In my opinion, it surpasses the others I’ve read, except, perhaps, for the first two or three installments of the Twilight series. My personal ranking of the ones I’ve read is:

1. Twilight, Eclipse, and New Moon
2. Vampire Academy
3. House of Night
4. Blue Bloods
5. Breaking Dawn
6. Peeps (this one is last because of the gross parasite angle… the plotting and characters were actually pretty good)

I don’t really feel qualified to add the Vampire Diaries to the list, because I barely remember them. I remember liking the first three pretty well, but that the fourth book was a bit of a let down. But, it’s probably been 15 years since I read them.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next installment the Vampire Academy series, which comes out in November.

I saw on Google today that it’s Paddington Bear’s 50th birthday. I loved Paddington Bear when I was a kid. I liked him so much more than silly old Winnie the Pooh — though, I think that might be because I never was a fan of the Disneyfied version of WtP. If the “classic” Pooh stuff that you see today had been available when I was young, I might have liked WtP more.

Of course, WtP didn’t have that romantic association of being lost at Paddington station. Paddington also seemed special because he had a real family in the “real world,” whereas WtP lived in an imaginary world.

Thinking about Paddington made me think about some of the other picture books I loved. I’ve talked at length on this blog about childhood books and Y/A books, but I’ve never really talked about picture books, which are an important element of childhood reading all their own.

When I stayed at my grandmother’s house as a little girl (my Mimi), I used to beg her to read me stories. She had quite a collection of Golden Books to choose from. I loved “The Pokey Little Puppy,” “The Saggy, Baggy Lion,” and all the other classics. She also had Babar the Elephant books, which I loved.

Two of my favorites, though, I’ve never seen in a regular store. I don’t know if they were really old, like from the 50s when my mom was a girl, or if they just weren’t actually Golden Books (I seem to remember that they were, though, I could be wrong).

One of them was called (I think) “Harry Goes to Lollipop Land.” It was this funny story of a little boy who goes to Lollipop Land where everything is made out of candy. Talk about a dream for a little kid, right? And the pictures were great — I totally wanted to go outside and find a tree made out of lollipops to snack on!

The other one I loved was the story of the easter bunny. I don’t remember the title now. The main character was a bunny — I think he was called “Grandpa Bunny,” but the details are hazy. I remember all these pictures of the bunny painting these beautiful Easter eggs to give to all the good little girls and boys. Every year, the eggs got more and more intricate. Then he trained all his children and his children’s children to carry on the work, and Grandpa Bunny moved on to painting flowers, tree leaves, and other colorful portions of nature. I remember a great image of him painting blue shadows in the snow. At the end of the story, Grandpa Bunny essentially dies, but they don’t call it that in the book. He leaves Earth and takes a new job painting sunsets in the sky, so every time you see a beautiful sunset, you should remember that Grandpa Bunny painted it just for you.

I would love to try my hand at writing a picture book one day. I actually have a little story written that would make a good Christmas picture book. And I think that “A Castle in the Clouds” might also translate well to that medium. Sadly, I can’t draw for squat! Hmmm…

The weather is lovely this weekend — perfect timing for a week at the cabin. I’ve blogged about the cabin before. It’s my parents’ cabin, and it sits on about 60 acres just outside of the small town in central Texas where I grew up.

Many times, the peace and quiet of the cabin lends itself to fruitful writing time. The only thing that tends to break the peace is if my husband and my dad start working and get out the chainsaw or the wood chipper!

Other times, the cabin is a great reading place. I’ve got a cozy chair to curl up in, perfect for reading. It actually used to be my grandfather’s chair. I remember him sitting on that chair and giving me a horsey ride on “Ol’ Sam” (i.e., I would sit on his foot and  he’d buck it like a rocking horse). In fact, though now I can fill that chair all by myself, I remember being small enough that my grandfather and I could sit in it side-by-side.

Another fun thing about driving down is that I can always stop in at the library — my mom’s book collection! She’s even more of a voracious reader than I am (and I can read a lot of books!), and she’s had a couple more decades to grow her collection. There is always something interesting waiting for me to read — her collection spans romance, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and whatever else strikes her fancy at the time.

This trip, I actually brough back all the books I’d borrowed from her in the past couple of years (some had been scattered all over our house and/or hidden under the bed, thanks to my husband!). I brought two full brown paper bags full down, and I’m taking about half a bag back with me. That will be enough to keep me in reading material for a while.

Well, that’s about all I have to say for now, so I’ll stop blabbing. I hope everyone out there is having as nice a weekend as I’m having!

I’ve been noticing lately how the vampires and the werewolves are always pitted against each other in urban fantasy stories. Maybe I’ve been watching too much True Blood and reading too much of the Twilight  series lately, but there you go.

True, they aren’t always bitter hatred/kill them to death rivals, but the two supernatural breeds always seem to be on opposite sides. Look at Jacob and Edward in New Moon and forward (Twilight series) — for the bulk of that series, they were bitter rivals, only brought together by common feelings for Bella. (Spoiler: Though this series did make it all work out in the end between the two groups — Breaking Dawn had the happiest of happily ever afters, somewhat to its detriment.)

Look at Richard and Jean Claude in the Anita Blake series. Now, things could have changed there, as I had to give up the series when the sex became more important than the plot, but there was always rivalry there — in check only because Jean Claude, the vampire, had power over the werewolves, so Richard had to obey, even if he didn’t want to. Again, they compromised sometimes over Anita, but they had that innate rivalry.

The rivalry wasn’t so pronounced in the Whedon ‘verse (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel), possibly because the werewolves in his ‘verse were very bestial with little humanity while in wolf form. But, the vampires didn’t like them and wouldn’t even sully their taste buds to drink from them unless forced. Luckily, at least Angel and Oz managed to get along in souled/human form.

Oh, and don’t forget Underworld. I only saw the movies (not the games), but they took the vampire/werewolf war to the next level!

And now there’s True Blood (the following is spoilerish if you’re not up-to-date on the show). They haven’t actually said that Sam is a weredog yet, so I can’t know for sure, but they are really hinting that way, and his hatred of all things vampiric led him to totally muck up the chance that Sookie gave him when she let him take her out on that date. I haven’t read the books because I don’t want to spoil myself for the TV show, so I don’t know what kind of rivalry they have there.

So, I wonder what it is about these two groups that always leads to rivalry?

I suppose one could say that it’s all about the women — many of the above examples have a werewolf (or animal shape-shifter, but we’ll just go with werewolf for simplicity’s sake) and a vampire fighting over a girl. But, I don’t really think that’s it. In some instances, the woman in the middle serves to bring the opposing sides together in a truce when nothing else would have.

My guess is it’s the difference between the two breeds’ supernatural powers. Vampires are more mental, while werewolves, et al, are all about the body. Vampires are urbane, stylish, and decadent, while werewolves are more sweats and T-shirts (you have to be if you ruin your clothes every time you shift!). Vampires hold back on their emotions, while the animal nature of the werewolves has them embracing emotions full-force. Vamprires have learned to withdraw from the human race, while the werewolves seem to want to be a part of it (and you never want what you can easily have, right?). Vampires are the ice, and werewolves are the flame.

Of course, all of the above are generalities. Every urban fantasy ‘verse has its own take on the matter.

I would be interested to see an urban fantasy in which the werewolves and the vampires were strong allies who respected each other. I’m sure there is one out there somewhere — every story in the world has already been written, right? — but I have yet to stumble across it.

Also, it boggles my mind how often, when the human girl is torn between the werewolf lover and the vampire lover, how often she picks the vampire. The poor, emotional werewolves are always left alone, licking their wounds. Me, I’d take the werewolf (assuming, of course, that it was the kind of werewolf that could control itself in beast form, like those in Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld or the La Push pack in Twilight — I’m not sure I’d make that same call if the werewolf were mega-beasty like Oz in BtVS).

So, thoughts? I’d love any other takes on causes of the vampire/werewolf rivalry. And, just out of curiosity, if you had to choose, which side would you be on?

Howdy out there. Just a quick shout out to my friend Meng (also known as my sister’s boyfriend) — the episode of Jeopardy! that he taped this summer is airing today. Much excitement around our house today!

I tell you, I always wondered if I had the skills to be on a game show like that. I’ve always been somewhat of a game show junkie — at least when I’m home in the middle of the day. But, after helping Meng practice for his appearance (OK, well, my “help” basically consisted of letting him DVR episodes at my house and watching them with him), I figured out that I don’t have the trivia chops for it. At least not for Jeopardy! If they still made Win Ben Stein’s Money, I might have a chance there! But, yeah, my obscure trivia factoids are nowhere in his league.

Because of this Jeopardy! madness, I did have the chance to read Ken Jennings’ book, Brainiac. I really enjoyed it. If you like trivia and you like memoir, you’ll enjoy it, too.

So, yes, this post was mostly a break from or regularly scheduled content, but I thought the event was worth the topic shift. And I kinda saved it by talking about a book, right? **grins**

Main characters aren’t always the brightest bulbs in the shed, but when a character does veer into the stupid zone, it is so much more irritating to me as a reader when the story is told in the first person point of view.

The problem is that for the reader to know something more is going on than what the main character sees (or allows him/herself to see), it has to be there on the page. We’ve got to see all the things that the main character misses, and if we see it, it’s hard to understand sometimes why the main character doesn’t see it. If I, as a reader, see these things, I may want to thwap the main character when they are obtuse.

In third person, there is a bit of distance between the narration and the main character’s point of view. Even in third person limited, there is still a sense of space between the narration and the main character’s mind.

In the first person, however, the narration is completely filtered through the main character’s eyes and mind. If the main character doesn’t see it, know it, or experience it somehow, the reader can’t know it. So, since the reader has to experience it, there are times that it will drive me crazy when they overlook or don’t understand whatever it is.

Of course, sometimes, people misunderstand things. I can forgive that in a character to a certain extent, but it gets to a point where it’s no longer a misunderstanding, but stupidity.

Take, for example, the House of Night series by P.C. and Kristin Cast. I recently read the latest installment, Untamed, and the main character, Zoey, kept observing things, such as the behavior of one of her friends, that was contrary to what Zoey would have liked it to be. And she kept rationalizing it to herself, denying it, in essence. Once or twice, maybe I could have put up with, but over and over again she did it! Her stupidity started to really grate on my nerves. I was right there in her head with her, and she just refused to actually see what was going on! And, the thing is, Zoey is not stupid by nature, but I get the feeling that she had to miss/deny this crucial fact to herself so that the plot could continue to progress unhindered.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I still like the HoN series. It’s addicting — Y/A vampire crack would probably be the most appropriate term. I even like the character of Zoey for the most part — she manages a destiny and a significant subset of powers without (so far) falling into that Mary Sue unbelievability that eventually assails other characters (e.g., Anita Blake and Bella Swan).

But sometimes I just want to shake Zoey for not being able to see what is right in front of her face.
If the story were told in the third person, maybe it would be easier to accept that she didn’t understand the implications of what she saw. Or even to believe that she didn’t see it at all. Not noticing something is one thing. Seeing it and not understanding it is stupidity.

So, perhaps, if you’re going to make your main character stupid or obtuse, I think it would be very wise to stay far away from first person narration. Or, alternatively, how about we not make the characters stupid at all — or at least not simply for sake of foreshadowing or the plot. If a character is going to have a stupid moment, make it something that arises from the character, not as a method for moving the plot along!

I think that the line between a story that’s cliche and a story that breathes new life into an old trope can be very fine indeed. Sometimes, I think that the line is more in the head of the reader than anything else. Of course, the writer has to do his or her part. You’ve got to give that old idea new trappings, new characters and settings to make it interesting again. A new twist on the plot, if you can think of one, is good, too.

But, sometimes, there’s nary a new twist to be found. After all, there are a finite number of plots out there — depending on who you listen to, it’s 10 or 12 or maybe 36. You can boil so many radically different stories down to “man vs. man” or “man vs. machine,” etc. The thing that makes them stand out is how the writer told the story.

I’ve been thinking about this recently because of two stories that I submitted to Every Day Fiction. One was a ghost story, and it was rejected for being too cliche. The other was my recent acceptance, “A Million Faces.” The acceptance email actually said that they felt I’d breathed new life into an old trope, which was really nice to hear. I’m really excited about sharing that story with the world — I had fun writing it, and I felt like I really connected with the main character.

But I wonder what it was that made AMF work, while my ghost story still languishes without a home?

I started thinking, maybe I, as a reader, am too close to the ghost story. The stories that spook me the most are ghost stories. Hack-em-up stories gross me out, but they don’t really scare me. Ghosts, however… whew! I still think the pilot episode of the show Supernatural, which dealt with plenty of ghosts, was the scariest one they ever did — followed by all the other ghost stories. The ones about various earth-bound monsters or demons… still interesting, but not as much with the creepy chill factor.

I was never a big fan of The Sixth Sense, but I think that’s because it was built up to me way too much. I didn’t see it until DVD, so by that point, after all the hype, it would have had to be a much more impressive film for me to be blown away. I did think the twist was cool, though. The movie The Others, however, was totally creepifying to me! And there was the other movie that I saw where a guy had this whole life on an estate with a wealthy, eccentric family, and at the end it turned out that the estate was a crumbling ruin and they’d been ghosts all along. That one totally freaked me out, too — though, sadly, I have totally forgotten the name of the film.

So, maybe because ghost stories really affect me as a reader/viewer, it’s harder for me to write one with some distance? Maybe what seems cliche to other people, doesn’t feel that way to me because I still enjoy that trope?

I don’t know if that’s the case, but it would make sense… I struggle with the same thing in my urban fantasy stories. I love stories about vampires, werewolves, etc., in all their forms. I like the classic stories, but I like the ones that twist the myths, as well. To me, it’s about the characters and what they do with these ideas — it doesn’t bother me if the vampire has a reflection or not or if the werewolf can only change on the full moon or has full control of the shifting abilities. The creature’s abilities and flaws are tools that help the writer tell the story they want to tell with their unique set of characters.

But, I’ve gotten rejections on my urban fantasy stories because the editors of that publication felt the stories didn’t do anything unexpected enough.

On the flip side, I absolutely hated the novel Eragon. I couldn’t even get through it. It felt too cliched, and I didn’t like the writing style. I’ve always loved stories about dragons, but I didn’t feel like this one gave me anything new to hold onto. In addition, the characters were achingly flat. So, not only was there no new twist, but there were no characters to really get behind or get involved with.

But, I’m definitely in the minority on that one, if the way the novels are selling are any indication. I even had some friends who read the book say that, yes, they thought it was derivative of basically every fantasy epic in recent history (everything from Tolkien to Star Wars), but they still enjoyed reading it. And, heck, they made Eragon into a major motion picture, so a lot of people out there have to like it.

In the end, I think luck continues to play a big role. Write a good story — the story that you want to write, not the one you think the market wants you to write — and then send it out. Sure, you may get rejections if the editors feel that you didn’t twist the trope into something new enough. But, there is probably someone out there who will get your story and who will love your voice enough to publish it. It’s the idea of the right story, in front of the right person, at the right time.

All Things Girl’s fall issue is out, and I loved this article about being a “book aunt” by our own Miss Meliss.

I never thought about it in quite these terms, but when I read the article, I realized that I totally am a book aunt, too. When my best friend had her daughter, I got into the habit of always buying her a book at the holidays (her birthday and Christmas are so close together, so, from me, she always gets one book and one toy). I carried on the tradition with my other friends’ twins (well, they’ve only had the one Christmas and birthday so far, but I intend to continue).

Currently, due to the young ages of the kids, we’re still into board books, but I find myself really looking forward to the days when I can buy them some of my favorites… especially the girls, as that is the type of children’s literature I was into as a kid. I would love it if I were able to give them their first copies of Little Women, A Little Princess, and all those other great books I talked about in my recent childhood reading post.

Reading can be a very subjective thing, but it can be something that’s really awesome to share, as well. My mom brought me up on reading. I never had a book aunt in the way Melissa talks about in her article, but I didn’t miss it because my mom always made reading as something special between the two of us. She read with my sister, too, but we each always got our own story every night — private time, just me and Mom. Those are memories I cherish.

Did you know that Bambi was a novel with some rather existentialist leanings before it became a cute Disney flick? Mom and I read it together. She read me Tarzan books, too. I also remember Tom Swift, Andre Norton’s Witchworld, classics like Charlotte’s Web, and more. I even remember reading Star Wars books about Han Solo and a great short story called “The Love Letter” (not that movie with Sandra Bullock, but a cool story about a man who bought an antique desk and exchanged love letters through time with a woman a century before).

There was the A Tree Growns in Brooklyn period (recommended to my mom by one of her friends) — that one was a bit of a mistake, as neither of us enjoyed it, but no matter what the book was, I loved the time we spent reading together. I was probably the oldest kid I knew still getting a “bedtime story,” but it was a tradition I wasn’t willing to let go of for a long time.

All this time spent reading was time that helped mold me into the book lover and voracious reader today. I also credit her with making me into a sci-fi/fantasy fan (how many other kids’ moms read them Andre Norton?), and I wouldn’t have it any other way. (The Y/A literature obsession, though, is totally my own thing!)

So, anyway, I’m going to take a minute now to say thank you to my mom for instilling in me such a love of reading and for spending all those nights putting up with my pleas for “just one more chapter.” Those are some of my favorite childhood memories, and I hope you know how much it meant to me.

I hope that a love of reading is something I can instill in the kids in my life, whether they be one of my honorary nieces or nephews or a blood relation. I’m proud to be a book aunt!