Another Fine Myth - Book Review

“Take the Universe as it is. Add devils, dragons, and magic. Then stand back… Skeeve was a magician’s apprentice, until an assasin hired by an ancient enemy struck and his master was dead. Skeeve suddenly found himself alone with Aahz, a purple-tongued demon the old magician had summoned from another dimension as a practical joke just before he was killed. Aahz had lost his powers. Skeeve had just lost his job. So, together, they set out through a universe populated by Deveels, Imps, dragons, unicorns, and more, look for a way to get even…” (from inner book jacket)

I would actually disagree with the book jacket, they aren’t really out to get even exactly. Skeeve is terrified when he first meets Aahz. After all, he has just seen his master killed by assassins, and Aahz is the first demon he’s met. Aahz quickly sets the record straight, he’s not some scary monster, he’s merely a magician from another dimension, and he had a deal with Skeeve’s master that they could summon each other to scare the unwary. Unfortunately his magic’s gone for unknown reasons (they suspect Skeeve’s master did something) but he still decides to take Skeeve on as an apprentice.

They soon discover that the person behind the murder of Skeeve’s master is someone that Aahz has grappled with before, and that he wants to take over not just Skeeve’s dimension, but eventually, all of them. That’s why I say they aren’t really getting even (which the book jacket said) but on a quest to save everyone from this crazy magician, and to get Skeeve’s powers back if possible. Along the way Skeeve begins to take off in leaps and bounds as a magician, they use trickery and magic to fool first a demon hunter and then some demon assassins, and Skeeve gets his first taste of inter-dimensional travel.

I give this book 4 out of 5 cups of coffee, it is a great read, and the only thing that’s holding it back from that five is that while I loved this book I’ve read others recently that inspired me more to say “Go buy it, now!” However, if you love fantasy, and like some good humor mixed in, definitely put it on your to-read list!

~ Ruthie ~

Versatility

Apparently I'm a versatile blogger! What does that mean? Well first of all it means that I won this award!

Thanks AubrieAnne!

Out of random curiosity (cuz I'm like that) I looked up the word "versatile" on dictionary.com to see what the actual meaning is because I know that sometimes I have a good idea of what a word means but don't know the precise meaning. What I found was:

1.capable of or adapted for turning easily from one to anotherof various tasks, fields of endeavor, etc.: a versatile writer

Isn't that awesome? They linked versatility with writing and my award is for being a versatile blogger...which of course means I write! And, I suppose, I do have some versatility in my blogging. I do try to keep this blog related to the writing and books, but within that I have some randomness and versatility. 



Now here's the rules for this award:


· Thank and link to the blogger that bestowed the award (see above)
· Share seven random facts about yourself (see below)
· Spread the love by passing the award to five other bloggers and to let them know

1. I'm currently wearing a skirt for the first time this year O_O

2. I have 6 piercings, three in each ear, on the lobes. 

3. I had a cartilage piercing but it closed and that's a long story. 

4. I got to help design my wedding dress.

5. I used to swing dance.

6. I got to help teach dance lessons at two different weddings.

7. My wallet (like so many other things) is purple.

Want to know more random facts about me?

Check out this post I did last time I received awards!

Who wins next?

I have a confession to make...

I haven't been following other blogs very well >_>

Oops.

So I'm not going to pass this award on this time.

Please nobody stone me.

~ Ruthie ~

WIP Wednesday - Moving Right Along

I'm still working away on my editing. Now that I have things reorganized in paper form I've been taking the digital copy and rearranging it, as well as inserting my notes, and copying the outline from the 3x5 cards into a single sheet. And I'm not done...

At first when I thought about writing this post I was a little embarrassed. I've had a couple of days - how long does it take to reorganize a file and type in notes? And isn't that a little OCD to do it all at once instead of as I go while editing?

That's when I had to sit back and remind myself that I am my own harshest critic. For one, I have at least worked on my book every day that it's been feasible since we last talked, which is nothing to sneeze at. For two, the reorganizing in digital form is taking a lot longer than I thought I would, so my original guess that it'd be done with an hour of two of work wasn't accurate and I shouldn't hold myself to it. Lastly, I've already seen this as being useful.

There are a lot of plot holes that I'm going to need to fill in this edit. Things where I just "made it happen" and now I need to go back and make it make sense. As I've been copying the old text into a new file, in the current "proper" order, I've come up with some of the solutions to filling those holes. It still feels like I'm being a little OCD about it - but as long as it's helping with the edit - I shouldn't complain right?

I've signed up for round 2 this year of ROW80! Round 1 went nothing like I expected, but that's ok, life does that some times. I don't have definite goals yet for this round, but the official start date isn't until the 2nd, and I should have something by then (maybe).

Don't know what ROW80 is? Check out the website! 

~ Ruthie ~

Ps. How's your writing going?

The Night Circus - a Book Review

“The Night Circus arrives without warning.” The Night Circus is more fantastical than you’d ever imagine. The Night Circus is the Circus as you’ve always hoped it would be.

In “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern we meet Celia and Marco. Each raised by a different magician to follow in their legacy, and to participate in a strange challenge that neither of the participants really understands until the end. All they know is that their skills are being pitted against each other.

The arena for this challenge is the Night Circus. The Circus starts as a dream by those who have a love for the incredible, and who have a burning passion to create the ultimate reactions from the audience. Marco joins in the production as the assistant to the man orchestrating it all. Celia joins when she auditions for the part of the Illusionist and shocks everyone with her skill.

The imagery in this book is incredible. I felt as if I was swept up in the magic as I read, and I lost all track of time and what was really going on around me. I was, for a time, transported to the Night Circus, where dreamers are welcome.

Honestly? I don’t think I can adequately describe this book for you. The best thing I can do is to say GO READ IT. This is one of the best books, possibly the best, that I have read in the last year or so. I’m giving this 5 out of 5 cups of coffee and I’ll be anxiously waiting to find out what else Erin Morgenstern does.

For all of your writers out there, especially the Wrimos, guess what? Erin is one of us. This novel came into being because of her participation in NaNoWriMo. I don’t remember the whole story, but if she ended up with an incredible gem like this? Well, I’d say there’s a lot of hope for the rest of us! Dreamers who happen to write.

~ Ruthie ~

The Hunger Games - Minimal Spoilers

I've had several people ask me about the Hunger Games book trilogy lately, along with the frequently stated, "They sound kinda disturbing." Since I saw the movie yesterday I thought I'd take a few minutes to explain why I like the books so much, and of course, tell you what I thought of the movie!

First of all, yes, the concept behind the Hunger Games Trilogy is disturbing. For those of you who still know nothing beyond the title, the Hunger Games takes place in an undefined future in which the land has been divided up into districts after a great war. Each district is responsible for one aspect of industry, and they are all ruled from the Capitol. Seventy-four years ago District 13 revolted and was destroyed, and now in order to keep the rest of the districts cowed the Capitol hosts an annual Hunger Games. Each district is required to provide one boy and one girl, ages 12-18, to participate in a contest to the death, with the winner being rewarded with unbelievable riches, and their district receiving many important benefits as well. The books follow one girl, Katniss Everdeen, who competes in the Hunger Games after volunteering to take her little sister's place.

These Hunger Games are incredibly barbaric, and made even more so by the fact that the citizens of the capital see them as the highlight of the year, placing bets and throwing parties and generally having a great time while children die. Honestly? When I first heard about the books and saw them showing up all over the internet I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like them, but I picked the first book up because I was seeing them all over the place and I didn't want to join the internet discussion without having an informed opinion.

I was blown away by the books. They are very well written and not at all what I was picturing. Yes, there is violence and parts that are horrible, but the focus of the books isn't on the violence, it is on the girl, Katniss Everdeen, and actually? Considering the topic, they are no where near as violent as they could be.

I loved the books because they are about people. People that you get to know and love. The author uses the Hunger Games, which are horrific, to highlight how valuable human life really is, which is something missing from a lot of the media today's teens are exposed to. That's not the only good message in these books either. They highlight how ridiculous the obsession with fashion can become, talk about staying true to who you are when others try to change you, and the importance of friendships and family.

Having said how much I like the books, I have to admit I have really mixed feelings about the movie. I did enjoy it, don't get me wrong! I think they got a lot of things right. There were a few things they left out, but most of it wasn't that big of a deal, and I think they did a good job at maintaining the integrity of the story. They managed to maintain the important messages in the book, they did a great job with the costumes and bringing to life the images in the book, and the actors did a great job.

Still, I think they could have done a better job with it, the most important thing being that it was a better movie for the fans than it was for people who've never read the books. There were things that I understood, knowing from the books what was going on, that left my husband completely confused.

I also really didn't like the camera work. They used a shaky "realistic" style of camera work in many places that was designed to make you feel like you were looking at the scene in first person. I haven't seen Saving Private Ryan, but my husband tells me it was a lot like that style. I would have been fine with it if they only used that technique a little bit, but I think they over did it. It also left me with a horrible migraine, which is just no fun.

Bottom line? It's was better done than Twilight but not as good as the later Harry Potter movies. If you love the books (and don't get migraines easily) by all means, go see it! You will probably really enjoy it. If you haven't read the books, well you might not like it as much, but it's still not a bad movie.

The Luck of the Irish - Creative Writing

This week's Creative Nudge was:

Theme: The Luck of the Irish

Genre: Any

Other Requirements? None

Here's what I wrote up :)


Patrica Ann O'Conner (Patty to her friends) was Irish to the core, and her parents would never let her forget it.

Neither would her friends.

Patty supposed that she would have liked being Irish if things had been a little less, well, Irish in her life, but there was no hope of that. First there was her red hair. It was actually a good shade of red, but her friends never got tired of making jokes about how she was the most Irish person they had ever met, and if she got grumpy, teasing her about the inevitable temper that an Irish red-head was bound to have. She also kinda hated how badly she burned in the sun.

Neither of those was as bad as her parents though. They weren’t just Irish, they were Irish and they reveled in it. Her house was done in a thousand shades of green. Green grass that was fertilized to keep it's healthy color. Green plants. Never a flower in the flower bed because, well, they weren't green. Light green paint with darker green trim on the outside. Paler green on the walls inside, accented by the furniture, the dishes, the carpet, the pillows, the nick-nacks, and even her parents, all in shades of green.

The sole exception to this green paradise was her room. Patty did her room in purples when she was 12 (much to her parents dismay, but they had let her pick out the paint) and accented it with silver, white, and black. She owned green clothing, but only because her parents bought it for her, and she shoved it to the back of the closet so that the only time green ever really invaded her home was when her parents would come in to talk to her.

Don't even get Patty started on St. Patricks day. Seriously. Don't.

If an unfortunate person were to make the mistake of asking her about the quintessentially Irish holiday they would be subjected to a lengthy rant about the improbability of St Patrick actually having anything to do with snakes, let alone eliminating all of them from an entire island, how society currently used it as an excuse to get drunk (and if that wasn't a stereotyped way of portraying the Irish she didn't know what was), and her parents. Her parents, you see, took the holiday as an excuse to throw open the doors of their home to any reveler passing by who might like a pint of guiness in the most Irish household in Sacramento. It was embarrassing really.

Her friends didn't get of course. They thought her parents were weird but cool (especially around the holiday not to be mentioned) and loved how her Mom showed up at school every year with green cupcakes for Patty's birthday. This tradition lasted until Patty's first year of high school when Patty threw a legendary tantrum in which she threatened to dye her hair black if her Mom ever crossed the threshold of her school for anything but a parent teacher conference or otherwise normal reason. Her friends didn't understand why she fussed about it (and why anyone would reject cupcakes) and it was about this time that Patty decided she might need new friends. Not coincidentally, she also began introducing herself as Ann and refused to answer to anything else.

Others might thinking Patricia Ann O'Connor was lucky for being born with into her heritage, but honestly? Sometimes it sucked being Irish.

I had a lot of fun writing this! It was definitely influenced by all the young adult fiction I've been reading lately, and it was fun to try something that I haven't done before! I might try more of it in the future. We'll see.


Did you write up a response to this week's Creative Nudge? Leave me a comment and tell me about it! 


~ Ruthie ~

WIP Update - Constructive Destruction

***Warning, today's blog is full of pictures, but worth it!***

Thursday I posted about finishing the outlining process for my current WIP. I had gone through, marked each scene, and created flash cards to go with them. This is what happened next:

That's my book! Laid out scene by scene! All 91 scenes originally written! The reason there are some gaps is that some scenes did not contain complete pages. While this looks pretty, I quickly discovered it took up too much space to be practical. The goal was to lay out the book in order to contemplate the order of scenes and chapters, and while I might have been able to do that if I had laid it out on a bunch of tables (maybe set up in a square with me in the middle?), my floor just wasn't cutting it. So I gathered them back into a pile,  but I was still thinking the floor, so I spread them out a few scenes at a time around my knees.

That didn't last long. My joints don't like the floor that much, and I realized that I only needed to look at a handful of scenes at a time, so a table would do. Gathering up my supplies, I moved again.

A few scenes laid out to work on.

Like the card table? It's probably from the 70's... 

I used my tray table to put the manuscript piles. 

On the right, scenes to work on, on the left, completed ones paper clipped into chapters.

I loved watching the second pile grow!

In the middle of moving things around.

Since I don't outline first, I found this process really helpful. Especially because I wrote the first draft using alternating points of view (POV). It worked well at first, but by the time I had added in the rest of the adventurers, it just wasn't working well. I also realized, as I was reading through it, that I changed POV way too frequently. It felt like good long breaks in between each character as I was writing it, but reading? I'd change almost every page! That's just too confusing! 

I'm switching to using an omniscient narrator for at least the majority of the book, and that means I need to reorganize the order of some of the early scenes (where my characters were in two different places) and there was a little bit of shuffling through out the rest as well. Mostly in the chapter breaks. I kept my chapters at a pretty consistent word length during writing (it helped me to set goals and meet them) and had some horrible breaks as a result. I know that these might not be the "final" chapter breaks, but I think how I have them divided up currently will make the editing process much easier. Want too see how the final chapters look?

Isn't it pretty? Each chapter is marked with a sticky note in the top right, and has the 3x5 cards that matched the scenes in the top left corner. I'm currently working on taking the original draft and copying it into pages in a new Scrivener file in the order that I've rearranged things. Then I'll edit it chapter by chapter, with the old text and the new text in side by side windows. I have a list of things I want to remember in this edit, and I'll include those the best I can while changing the point of view. It'll be challenging, but it's also fun to watch the book evolve!

I'll probably do this with future WIP's as well, although hopefully they will need a little less work between first and second drafts! It still helped a lot with chapter and flow, and I liked being able to pick things up and move them around. I think a longer table would be nice though. Maybe I'll get a study room at one of the libraries next time!

~ Ruthie ~ 

Ps. How are your WIP's going?