In the spirit of Halloween, I thought it would be fun to post some of my fears - some justifiable, and some that are just plain stupid. Here goes!
I'm scared of:
The bigfoot that I know lives in my backyard.
Walking up the driveway in the dark.
Peering through dark windows in case I see a face looking back.
That I won't be able to finish a second book.
That nobody will read any of my stories.
That I will never get my own apartment in town.
That I will never own my own tiny house.
That something will pull my leg if it's not completely under the covers.
All my digital files will disappear someday.
I will never be able to find a book that keeps my attention to the end.
That my voice doesn't matter.
Getting cancer.
Disappointing those I love.
Swimming to the bottom of a lake and finding a monster.
Being useless.
Wasting my time watching television, even for an hour.
Chainsaws.
Large dogs, including Beethoven.
Flat tires in the middle of nowhere.
No cell-phone reception in an emergency.
Running out of ideas.
There's a pretty modest list. As you can see, I'm afraid of a lot of things. But, sometimes it's fun to be scared. That's why I read every Goosebumps book available in grade school!
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
The Curtain Falls (eBook)
Looking for a great read for Halloween? Check out The Curtain Falls by Maine author Meg North!
I just finished reading this book that I purchased a few months ago (I am a slow reader, in case you haven't noticed!) and I absolutely loved it. This book had everything I was looking for, including Victorian romance, drama, family tension, and magic.
Get it now on Amazon while it's free and help boost it up the charts! If you loved it like I did, don't forget to leave a review. Personally, I am waiting anxiously for Miss North's next book which I hope is finished soon!
I just finished reading this book that I purchased a few months ago (I am a slow reader, in case you haven't noticed!) and I absolutely loved it. This book had everything I was looking for, including Victorian romance, drama, family tension, and magic.
Get it now on Amazon while it's free and help boost it up the charts! If you loved it like I did, don't forget to leave a review. Personally, I am waiting anxiously for Miss North's next book which I hope is finished soon!
Be Genuine
There isn't a real science to this post, but I am going to write it anyway. What the heck, right? Maybe you'll agree, and maybe you won't. If anything, it will provide a little food for thought.
I recently picked up a copy of Dan Simmons's The Abominable, a book that I've been waiting for anxiously for about a year. I knew that this book was going to be a slow read, and I needed to be ready and in the right mood before I started. The book began really great and sort of tapered off a bit as I continued through the introduction. What surprised me is that the introduction was what pulled me in, and the actual meat of the narrative lost some of the magic. Allow me to explain.
The book begins with a faux introduction where Dan Simmons pulls a Stephen King and makes himself a character in the novel - a fictional version of himself and his wife. He is explaining how he "met" a man who climbed Everest, and I was enthralled by the voice of Simmons as he recounts his meetings with the man and what led to the book that I held in my hands. I know it is completely fabricated (as far as I can tell) but, it felt genuine.
I trust that version of Simmons, with his naturalistic voice leaping off the page. I wanted to read a ton more in this voice and wished that the life of the story were kept going in this manner.
Sadly, the voice shifts to that of the man who climbed Everest, and it never really recovers. It was great introduction, anyway.
My point is, we can't control this genuineness per say, but, when it flows through us - that hypnotic fever of writing that just springs forth like a stream of consciousness, it will be genuine. The reader (myself especially) can tell when the voice isn't genuine. It comes across as fake and untrustworthy, and the story that is being told can suffer greatly from this plague. I try not to force my own writing sometimes because of this. My characters know when they want me to say something on their behalf, and sometimes they don't want to say anything at all. That's okay. I will wait until they have something to say and move on to some other part of the book.
When your writing voice is your own and you've found it after a lot of trial and error, you will know. It will feel natural and your characters will come alive in it. I'm going to keep reading Abominable and see if it picks up (I imagine it will, and sometimes I really love Simmons's prose). Whatever happens in this book, I do know that I like the "real" Simmons more than I like the Simmons impersonating an Everest explorer.
I recently picked up a copy of Dan Simmons's The Abominable, a book that I've been waiting for anxiously for about a year. I knew that this book was going to be a slow read, and I needed to be ready and in the right mood before I started. The book began really great and sort of tapered off a bit as I continued through the introduction. What surprised me is that the introduction was what pulled me in, and the actual meat of the narrative lost some of the magic. Allow me to explain.
The book begins with a faux introduction where Dan Simmons pulls a Stephen King and makes himself a character in the novel - a fictional version of himself and his wife. He is explaining how he "met" a man who climbed Everest, and I was enthralled by the voice of Simmons as he recounts his meetings with the man and what led to the book that I held in my hands. I know it is completely fabricated (as far as I can tell) but, it felt genuine.
I trust that version of Simmons, with his naturalistic voice leaping off the page. I wanted to read a ton more in this voice and wished that the life of the story were kept going in this manner.
Sadly, the voice shifts to that of the man who climbed Everest, and it never really recovers. It was great introduction, anyway.
My point is, we can't control this genuineness per say, but, when it flows through us - that hypnotic fever of writing that just springs forth like a stream of consciousness, it will be genuine. The reader (myself especially) can tell when the voice isn't genuine. It comes across as fake and untrustworthy, and the story that is being told can suffer greatly from this plague. I try not to force my own writing sometimes because of this. My characters know when they want me to say something on their behalf, and sometimes they don't want to say anything at all. That's okay. I will wait until they have something to say and move on to some other part of the book.
When your writing voice is your own and you've found it after a lot of trial and error, you will know. It will feel natural and your characters will come alive in it. I'm going to keep reading Abominable and see if it picks up (I imagine it will, and sometimes I really love Simmons's prose). Whatever happens in this book, I do know that I like the "real" Simmons more than I like the Simmons impersonating an Everest explorer.
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