Wonderful things are happening...

I have FINALLY worked out a believable magic system for Princess!! I'd tried a couple of times already and come up with something I thought worked, but then this morning I was sort of daydreaming about it and it all finally came together, and it is SO much better than before.

Now I have magic that is closely tied to blood (because magic is itself the blood of the earth), and a plausible reason for why only one family in this area of the world has it, and why Kel ends up having stronger magic than the rest of her relatives, and why succession is matrilineal. (Blogger is telling me this is not a word. It's totally a word!) I also have a good overarching problem for the series (oh yes, there will be more than one princess book). So while the problem of the first book is getting the kingdom back, lurking in the back will be the awakening magic and all the problems it could lead to...which will become more of the focus of the second (and third?) books.

Sometimes when I'm trying to come up with an idea, it feels like I'm struggling up a hill. I'm thinking of things, but they don't make a lot of sense, or they're too boring, or worst of all, they are perfectly good ideas but just aren't "right" for the project I have in mind. Those are not fun times. Those are the times in which you have worldbuilding fail.

Other times, I feel like one idea sparks another which sparks another which sparks another, to the point where I can hardly keep up, and they all fit together perfectly with each other and with things that I've come up with before. It feels like I'm running full speed down a hill, and it feels fantastic.

This is one of those times :)

Giveaway Roundup

Existence by David Brin 

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there’s something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn’t on the decades’ old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth’s infomesh about an “alien artifact.”

Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do: with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

 
Shifted Perspective by J. Bridger

 Caleb Byrne's life seems to be going well after he's accepted to his dream school for pre-med studies. Going great, sure, until he grows four paws, a tail, and fluffy curls... Now he has to deal with being the world's lamest shape shifter, an estranged family with furry secrets of their own, a prying girlfriend, and a killer werewolf on the loose, and he thought life had been hard before!

Black City by Elizabeth Richards
A dark and tender post-apocalyptic love story set in the aftermath of a bloody war

In a city where humans and Darklings are now separated by a high wall and tensions between the two races still simmer after a terrible war, sixteen-year-olds Ash Fisher, a half-blood Darkling, and Natalie Buchanan, a human and the daughter of the Emissary, meet and do the unthinkable—they fall in love. Bonded by a mysterious connection that causes Ash’s long-dormant heart to beat, Ash and Natalie first deny and then struggle to fight their forbidden feelings for each other, knowing if they’re caught, they’ll be executed—but their feelings are too strong.
When Ash and Natalie then find themselves at the center of a deadly conspiracy that threatens to pull the humans and Darklings back into war, they must make hard choices that could result in both their deaths.

Nightingale by David Farland

Grand Prize Winner of the Hollywood Book Festival, placed first in all genres, all categories.

Winner of the 2012 International Book Award for Best Young Adult Novel of the Year

Finalist in the Global Ebook Awards.

Some people sing at night to drive back the darkness.  Others sing to summon it. . . .

Bron Jones was abandoned at birth. Thrown into foster care, he was rejected by one family after another, until he met Olivia, a gifted and devoted high-school teacher who recognized him for what he really was--what her people call a "nightingale."

But Bron isn't ready to learn the truth. There are secrets that have been hidden from mankind for hundreds of thousands of years, secrets that should remain hidden. Some things are too dangerous to know.  Bron's secret may be the most dangerous of all.

In his remarkable young adult fantasy debut, David Farland shows why critics have called his work "compelling," "engrossing," "powerful," "profound," and "ultimately life-changing."

Skyship Acadmey: Crimson Rising by Nick James

Following their dramatic showdown in Seattle, Jesse Fisher and Cassius Stevenson find their world’s been turned inside out. The faculty at Skyship Academy is keeping Jesse a prisoner in his own home, fearful of his influence over Pearls. And Cassius, once a loyal Pearlhound for the Unified Party, has been pushed into hiding, fearful of his government's retaliation.

When Jesse smuggles a mysterious red Pearl onboard the Academy, he sets loose a destructive chain of events, which lead him to a reunion with Cassius and a confrontation with Theo -- a bloodthirsty Pearlhound with a dangerous secret.

But a larger threat looms in the stars. An enemy is gathering, with plans to exterminate the entire human race. And Jesse and Cassius might just be the lynch pins that trigger mankind's destruction.

 Banned books giveaway at I am a Reader Not a Writer

Choice of ChiZine eBook at Preturnatura

Reader's Choice at Preturnatura

Marvin the Caterpillar Finds True Love #9

In which Faith uses a Bad Word

I sat down with the intention of writing that post on rereading that I said I was going to write like two weeks ago, only to discover that I actually don't have enough to say for an entire post. I mean, I probably could get an entire post on it if I tried but seeing as I've been putting it off for so long obviously it's not going to happen. So instead, a series of comments, starting with rereading and ending with blog things:

1. Rereading is totally acceptable, and I will happily ignore those people who don't understand my desire to reenter worlds that have particularly engaged me and revisit characters who I've particularly identified with.

2. Sometimes I reread a book from a long time ago and I have changed so much that I no longer feel the same way about it. This usually happens when I'm rereading a book with writing flaws (info dumps, flat characters) that I was too young to notice the first time around. I find that I'm a much more critical reader than I was (though not as critical as many).

3. A section of the princess plot decided to make itself known to me yesterday. Progress! And yet, a lot of work remains to be done.

4. I will be doing NaNo this year, although I will almost definitely be participating with a reduced word count goal. I shall consider myself a winner if I get, let's say (excuse me while I do some math here)...15,000 words, a.k.a. 500 words a day. This is kind of a low bar but A) I have waaaaay to much work this semester, seriously it's insane and possibly unconstitutional, and B) then I can be pleasantly surprised and feel all proud of myself if I write more!

5. I may have said this already (I forget) but the progress bars will be staying exactly the way they are until I get out of the planning stage and into the writing. I don't even know how to begin estimating percentage completion for world building, when I won't know how much I need to do until I've already done it!

6. Marvin posts are now scheduled to run on Wednesdays from next Wednesday  until it's done. There are a lot left so it should last a while. Will there ever be a Marvin sequel? I really don't know. Perhaps a Freddy spinoff? [EDIT: Marvin will run once a week until February, at which point it will speed up so certain significant installments coincide with Valentine's day and my birthday]

7. I have a confession to make. I AM A BOOK GIVEAWAY WHORE. (There's your language). I appear to have notoriously bad luck in anything chance related that has to do with winning things (I'm looking at you, Urban NY), but I figure if I enter every single one I come across, I will eventually win something! Probably. Hopefully. Maybe. Knowing my luck, not until I'm 80. Anyway the point is that means my twitter is currently almost nothing but tweets/retweets about giveaways, which is usually counts as an additional entry. So yeah, I will at some point attempt to tweet more other things so that my twitter is not just a giveaway entry machine, but:

8. This is the order of things which I do: 1. Homework (at least in theory), 2. Writing, 3. Ballet, 4. Reading, 5. Other fun self-fulfilling things, like photography, or talking to other humans, or eating food, 6. Sleeping, 7. Blogging, and finally 8. Twitter. So, priorities being what they are, you understand why the blog has such long gaps between posts and the twitter is mostly barren.

LOOK HOW PRETTY THE BLOG IS

I finally got around to updating it! I like the background, though I may change it to something more book related. Or not.

I will also, in the fairly near future, be updating the blogroll/website list so that they are not years out of date. And small and sad and lonely.

Also the reading list, although I'm a bit scared of that one...there's a huge backlog and I seriously doubt I remember everything I read. Then again, do you really care to know every single book I've ever read? Whatever, that part is mostly for me anyway :)

And of course there will be a post with actual content coming your way soon. Just as soon as I finish the mountains of work I am currently procrastinating on.

Hey look it's...more vampires.

Okay, so I know I said last time that this time (oh boy) I would talk about rereading, but I changed my mind. I will eventually talk about that, but not today.

Today, we shall be talking about trends in literature.

Or rather, Things That Will Make Me Put the Book Down Immediately Unless There Is a Really Good Reason Not To. And they are:

1. Vampires/Werewolves

Unless there is something seriously interesting or different going on with them, I will not read about either. I'm tired of vampire boyfriends. I will read about bloodthirsty vampires, or British vampires (think Gail Carriger). Another example I saw recently was a woman who was the only (and I mean only) female werewolf.

2. Angels/Demons

 I have a naturally low tolerance for this subject matter. I have read very few books dealing with angels/demons that don't annoy me immensely. Exception: I was recently very pleasantly surprised by Sarah Reese Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon. I read her blog and really wanted to enjoy her book, but wasn't able to make myself pick it up because of the demons for a really long time. I regret that; it was excellent.

3. Distopian

There are just too many, and I don't have the energy to try to sort the good from the bad. So many seem terribly derivative. I'm not sure if it's just the jacket copy, but with so many excellent books on my to-read list, I don't have time to waste gambling on books that may just be the latest Hunger Games rehash.

4. Mermaids

Just never been a fan. Personal preference. I've yet to find a mermaid book which will prove me wrong, though I kind of hope Monstrous Beauty by Elizabeth Fama, which I found over at Preturnatura, might be the one.

There are more, but I won't bore you. I have to say, I really hate that I feel this way because it means I'm almost certainly missing out on some really great books.

Who's talking?

I don't have anything profound to share today (then again, when do I ever say anything profound?). I think tomorrow or whenever next I blog I will talk about rereading books, and revisiting books with a new perspective. But for now, I will just say that unattributed dialogue is a serious pain.

I'm currently reading Plato's Republic for a class. No, I'm not the kind of person who reads Plato for fun. I'm writing novels about princesses, for goodness' sakes! I'm much more likely to pick up a book with a dragon on the cover.

But I digress.

The Republic is actually a fairly engaging book, as "serious" books go, and I find myself getting rather drawn in to the dialogue. Then I discover that I've read four pages and no longer have any idea who's speaking. The book is almost exclusively dialogue, with few attributions and no quotation marks. It gets rather difficult at time to keep track of who is saying what.

I find myself with a new appreciation for dialogue tags and quotation marks and all those wonderful conventions of our time. Yes, grammar and punctuation rules require effort to learn. But they pay off a thousandfold when your reader can effortlessly understand your meaning, without having to backtrack to remember who is speaking.

P.S. An aside: This is actually the basis for a very important plot point in one of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels (I forget which one...the second, maybe?) I'm not going to spoil it, but just say that I highly recommend the series to any avid reader or writer. They are engaging, witty, clever, and contain many inside jokes for those of a literary bent.

Blaaargh

Packing. That is all.