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**

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!

Also, you can mark your calendars for 10/25, because that’s when my story, “A Million Faces,” goes live!

Looks like a great month! Yay, EDF!

Jens, another writing group mate, had a story accepted by EDF recently, but I didn’t see it on the TOC. I guess we can look forward to that story in November.

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.

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!

Happy reading, and happy Friday!

No news yet on the publication date, but I’m sure that will come soon.

When I was a child, my favorite books were the old fashioned ones where kids met obstacles with cheerfulness and perserverence, and were rewarded in the end. I also loved books where family was important, and if a character was a story-teller, it was a plus.

Some of my absolute favorites from childhood were Little Women, A Little Princess, Anne of Green Gables, and The Five Little Peppers series. I read them over and over again. I adored the imaginations all these kids had. Anne Shirley, of course, had more imagination than anyone I’ve ever known, and always pulled it off with such drama and style. Jo March’s scribblings and the antics that the March girls got up to fascinated me. I wanted to write, I wanted to have my own Pickwick club, and I wanted to perform plays in my bedroom. I also wanted to be part of the incorrigible Pepper clan, who made figuring out a way to have Christmas with no money an exciting adventure. I wanted to adopt a lonely boy (like Laurie and Jappy) into my family (why were all the lonely boys filthy rich?). And I wanted to be able to tell stories like Sarah Crewe.

As an adult, I can see the didactic moments in these stories, and some of the morals of the day seem absurd now (the author of the Peppers was obsessed with the idea that it was bad for children to get upset and cry — woe behold the Pepper child who had a temper tantrum!), but as a kid, these were my imaginary friends, family, and siblings.

In the modern world, you never get to float down a river pretending to be a heroine from ancient literature, you never write on slates, and you seldom ramble through the woods. Texas isn’t much for snow, so I never went sledding or ice skating on a pond. It was a whole different world — a world where everyone always got their just desserts and virtures like patience and kindness were always rewarded.

Pie in the sky ideals, yes, but even today I think those are ideals to shoot for. If we all treated each other with that kind of respect and love, the world would be a different place. However, at this point, I don’t think I’m ever going to be adopted by a millionaire, so I’ve had to give up that dream!

When I got a little older, I discovered The Song of the Lioness quartet written by Tamora Pierce. This series probably affected my writing more than any other books I’ve ever read. The heroine, Alanna (a girl in disguise trying to earn her place as a knight), was fiesty and brave, but flawed. The supporting cast was well-drawn and fascinating. The world had its own quirks and laws, but had familiar aspects, too. If I ever succeed as a young adult author, I would love to see my books next to hers at the bookstore (though, I suppose I’d have to write under a pseudonym, wouldn’t I?).

So, what about you guys? What books did you read when you were young that really meant something to you? Did they affect your outlook on life? If you’re a writer, did they affect that aspect of your life at all?

That’s the catalyst to Nick and Norah’s whirlwind night in the Y/A novel Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Nick is recovering from a brutal breakup and doesn’t want his ex to know how much he’s hurting, and Norah wants to avoid the same girl for reasons of her own. She responds to his question with a kiss, and the night begins.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, because it’s a fairly short book. In some ways, not much happens, but in other ways, they live a lifetime in one night. Nick and Norah have to figure out what they want, how to get over their exes, and how to let someone new into their lives.

My favorite thing about this book is the structure and points of view. The book is co-written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. They tell Nick and Norah’s story in alternating chapters. Because each character is written by a different author, the characters each have a truly unique voice. It really allows you to get into their heads and get to know them as characters.

Some of the most heard writing advice is to show, not tell, but in NaNIP, this rule is broken, and it’s done with abandon. Sure, there are a lot of scenes and plenty of things are shown, but there are also long passages where scenes are summarized in narration. We move through them quickly as events are filtered through Nick and Norah’s perspectives.

Normally, this telling style would drive me up the wall, but in this book, it works. The narration is so personal and dense, it’s almost like being in their heads and seeing how they see the world. The reader feels and experiences along with the characters. Cohn and Leviathan pull off what could be a really intrusive style, and make it work until I couldn’t imagine the story told in any other way.

As you can probably tell by the title, music also plays a big role in this story. It’s practically a character in and of itself, which is really interesting. Nick is part of a band and writes his own songs, and Norah’s dad is an executive at a record company, so they both live and breathe music. I don’t want to give too much away, but one of my favorite moments is Nick’s epiphany about life in relation to life being a song. I won’t tell you what that epiphany is, but you’ll know it when you get to it in the story.

Cohn and Levithan have come out with another book, as well. It’s written in the same universe as NaNIP, but none of the characters overlap. Only one setting overlaps, basically, but you feel like you’re in the same world again.

The new book is called Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List. I’ll admit, the title threw me off a bit at first, but I decided to give it a try because I’d enjoyed NaNIP so much.

The plot of NaEDKL, in a nutshell, is that Naomi and Ely have been best friends forever. They planned their wedding when they were in grade school, before Ely realized he was gay. In order to maintain their friendship after an incident in which they both had a crush on the same guy, they instituted their “No Kiss List” — a list of people who are off limits romantically for both of them. But a rule is broken, and suddenly Naomi and Ely’s friendship is blown completely apart, so they have to figure out what it is they really want.

This story is told in the same complex style as NaNIP, but the cast of characters is much wider. Naomi and Ely’s POVs are the most important, but we get many more — some for multiple chapters, and some for just one. I love multi-POV stories, because it is so fascinating to see the same scene from many different viewpoints. There is a scene during an intense game of bingo that we get from both Naomi’s POV and that of a girl named Kelly, and they each remember the events in a totally different fashion. It’s great.

My favorite chapters in the book are the ones written from the POV of the latest entry on the No Kiss List, the doorman of Naomi and Ely’s building, who is completely mad for Naomi. In one chapter, he makes her a mix tape, and each song on it has a specific meaning for him about either him or her and about the relationship they could have. The character won my heart forever when one of the songs on the playlist was “Walk Through the Fire” from “Once More With Feeling,” the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

One of the other things I liked in this book was the Bruce club — a group of insomniacs that meet in the lobby at night and (many of whom) are named Bruce.

Oh, and one minor spoiler (nothing too big). In Naomi’s chapters, her narration is punctuated by little symbols throughout. I couldn’t figure out what in the world that was for. It drove me crazy throughout the book. Then, at the end, they finally tell us. It’s not a big shocker or really relevant to the book, so I’m just going to explain it here. Then, if you read it, you won’t be wondering what they are for. Apparently, when Naomi and Ely were young, they learned sign language so they could have a secret language all their own. Naomi got pretty good at it and the symbols were her signing. Once I knew that, it all made sense! I found it particularly interesting since I have a good friend who teaching is a deaf school that focuses on ASL (American sign language).

So, to somewhat wrap up this very long post and review of two books, I will say that I enjoyed both very much, and they were definitely both worth the read. Both books deal with some mature subject matter, so they would be better for older teens; however, they are both done well. They’re also not very long, so they are a fast read. All in all, I would definitely recommend both!

Happy reading!

First, here is Y/A author Ally Carter (Gallagher Girls series) talking about the wrong questions aspiring Y/A authors ask. Then here she talks about the questions aspiring Y/A authors don’t think to ask, but should.

Then Agent Kristen talks about best-seller lists, using the Gallagher Girls as an example.

Happy reading, and I hope everyone has a relaxing Saturday.