Book Review: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

My friend LHughes practically forced me to read this book she loved it so much. Not that I wouldn't have read it on my own (eventually), but she sped the process up. While we were at school, she drove me to the bookstore, marched me in, and bought the paperback version of Daughter of Smoke and Bone before shoving it into my hands.

It wasn't that I didn't want to read it right away, I did, but I was in the middle of The Night Circus and couldn't put that down.

Well, I finally read this book.

And I am so glad that I did! It was so beautifully written. Her description is so vivid and unique. I almost wanted to go through as I was reading and take notes on the way she described things in new ways so that I could use it in my own writing. Not like, copy and paste what she said, but hopefully be influenced by it.

The novel takes place, mostly, in Prague. And while it's an amazing setting and Taylor uses it well, it's not overwhelming. I am lucky enough to have spent some time in Prague (just a few days) and I think that she does a fantastic job of setting the piece in a foreign city, but not making the reader feel left out if they've never been there themselves.

Okay, so what is it about? I can't tell you too much without spoiling the entire book, but I will tell you what I can. Karou is the main character of the novel. She is a mystery even to her self. She has been raised by a (for lack of a better phrase) family of monsters, but has no real knowledge of where she comes from. Who her parents are. Or where she got these unique eye tattoos on the palm of her hands. She exists between two words, the word of her monsters shop where they trade wishes for teeth, and the human world of Prague. Suddenly, black handprints are burned into doors all over the world, and Karou's family is threatened.

Taylor does an amazing job of world building here. Not only does she make the places in the human world so real and vibrant I'm convinced that she's spent many a vacation in both Prague and Morocco (a place where she runs errands for Brimstone, her foster father/ Wishmonger) AND this "Elsewhere" she's created.

So there was only two things that bothered me.

1.  And this would totally ruin everything for you so I'll be vague, is when you discover who Karou really is. I felt it was just a bit easy at first. Not the discovery, but who she is. 
2.  Sometimes Taylor's sentence structure bothered me. I'm not usually one that pay attention to that sort of thing, but after about 2/3s of the book it was really popping out at me. She has this habit of doing this: Original thought, side note on something that pertains to the first part of the sentence but goes on for a bit, return to original thought. The only reason this bothered me was that I found myself forgetting how the sentence started and had to go back and reread the first half to figure out what the last bit what saying. 

Now, here's the fun part. The sequel, Days of Blood and Starlight, comes out November 6th. So you totally have time to get out there and buy Daughter of Smoke and Bone and read it. Which you should do. Don't trust me? Check out LHughes' review here.  

Children and Thesis Writing

Ah. 

Children.

I don't have any, but that doesn't stop people from asking me (whenever I feel tired) "Oh, do you think your pregnant?" I suppose that question is fair game now that I'm married. 

However the answer is always, "No."

But that doesn't mean I don't have a child... of sorts. 

I have a thesis. 

I've seen posts and things where people compare writing a novel to a bad relationship. I'm sure I've even done it myself.

But right now, I think my thesis writing (which IS writing a novel) is a bit more like having a baby. Disclaimer: I've never had a baby therefore my comparison is biased/uninformed. But here we go anyway.

How my thesis is like a baby...

• It keeps me up at night
• I have to check on it every few hours to make sure it's okay
• I don't like leaving the house without it. What if it needs me while I'm gone?
• It needs to be looked after, and worked on, ALL THE TIME
• I can't really think of anything else
• Mostly, it's the only thing people ask me about anymore
• I love it
• And kind-a wish I could give it to a baby(thesis)sitter for just a few hours so I could relax and just not worry about it
• It keeps me from my housework 
• I tend to forget why I walked into a certain room because I'm too busy pondering what the thesis may need next
• I've put so much of myself into it
• Once you start it your life will NEVER be the same
• You really don't just have any "me time" anymore
• It needs to be nurtured to grow
• Really, it's the most ADORABLE thesis you've ever seen
• It has a personality all of its own
• Sometimes it does what it wants and just gets itself into trouble
• Lastly, it consumes so much of my time/life/mind that I might be a little crazy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Thesis writing has been WHY I've been so MIA for the past...forever. And will be, until this spring. I hope. That is my goal. 

So, until then expect sporadic and random updates. Many of which may focus around my thesis, because really, it's my life now.

Book Review: The Night Circus

I fell in love with this book. If you are looking for something to read go out and buy this book. Right now.

Okay, maybe not right now, finish reading my blog post and then go and get it. Or download it.

I found this book to be such a delight. There are some books, The Hunger Games series comes to mind, where you can't put the book down. You gobble the books up one after another. You would rather read than sleep. It consumes you. Some people think that that talent of making the reader turn the page again and again is a quality of a great writer. And it is. As a writer you want the reader to keep going. But I don't think that that makes a good book. You want the readers to savor the book as well.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a book worth savoring. Morgenstern has created a world that is so real and vibrant that you just want the circus to be real. If you are of the Harry Potter persuasion, it's like that desire to open your mailbox one day and find your letter from Hogwarts. You want to wander through the black and white striped tents and experience it all.

I would recommend this book for older YA, adult readers, and adult readers that enjoy YA. The main characters are in their upper teens and early twenties. The romance is intense and tastefully done. Yes, there is a sex scene, but if you ask me Breaking Dawn is more pornographic than this.

One thing that I didn't really like about this book was how each chapter started with a date and a place. Usually I don't mind these place markers in books, and they are needed  in this book as well, but it got me too focused on the year and how old the characters are. So, if you do go read this book (which you need to) just be aware of the two different timelines. There is the one with Marco and Celia and then there is Bailey and his plot line. Just be aware to keep those two plot lines straight and the other dates don't really matter.


So all in all. This is a MUST READ! Highly recommend! So, why are you just sitting there? Go! BUY IT NOW! 

Revision is a New Form of Hell...

Well, my plan has been to work on writing the last few chapters of the novel and revise the earlier chapters at the same time. You know, one day writing, one day revision, and so on. 

Ha!

That plan didn't really work out. I am making progress, however; it is not as quick as I would like for it to be. 

Writing the climax of my novel is really intimidating. It's like, it's been in my head for so long, it's what I've been working toward, and what if it doesn't come across as well on paper? What if I fail at delivering? It's what the readers has invested their time in reading the novel for. 

So there's that lovely little rain cloud hanging over my head.

Then, there's the revision.

Yes, I have revised things before. How can I be in a writing program and not have done it. However, this time it seems different. Reading Chapter One and getting ready to revise it was just depressing. I looked at it and was like, "Shit, I'm going to have to rewrite the whole damn thing." This is such crap! 

Then I took a break and literally stared at the hard-copy pages I printed out. I thought about things. About revision, about how to crawl inside of something and make it all better but not waste all the words and work you've already put into it.

After that, I put my little bird on my computer screen and went to work.

It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It really was like I could climb into the chapter and fix it. I cut pages and saved paragraphs. I shuffled things around and rewrote big chunks. What I found was, it was fun. I have a better handle on my characters now than I did when I started this years ago. I know who they are, how they talk, and how they react to thing. Even better, I know how to fold description into the story and eliminate huge paragraphs that are all telling and no showing. I know the weight of one perfect word over half a page of the almost right words. 

It is a slow process. In a way it's daunting and hellish, I wonder if I'll ever get it done. 

But, I just have to keep going. One page of revision at a time and writing one sentence at a time. 

 

Back to Reality

Yes, I lied.


I said that I would post (not regularly, but post none-the-less) this summer. Well, I didn't. Sure, I posted a bit, but not enough to count.


I was super busy! This was my last summer to be on campus during my program and I wanted to make it count. And did I ever. I made tons of new friends, got lots of writing done, fell back in love with my novel/WIP/thesis, AND came to terms with the fact that I am a good writer.


For such a long time I felt like I wasn't good enough. That the words that I put done on the page were just awful and that I'd never get a book deal. 


Well, I don't feel that now. I reread a lot of my older stuff, stuff I typed up three months ago and with each key stroke would think, "This is shit. This is total and complete shit, but just get it on the page and then you can revise." I don't think that anymore. 


I need to believe in myself, because if I don't then who the hell is going to? Yes, my super-amazing husband will always believe in me, and so will my family, but that is only enough when you believe in yourself. 


I'm stepping off of my soapbox now. 


Goals for this new "year." I say year because by this time next year I will (hopefully) have my thesis done and will be looking for agents/ editors. Well, let me rephrase... Goal for this year. Work on my thesis/novel (it's one in the same now) for AT LEAST one hour each day. I need to do that to get the last few chapter written and then begin the revision process before sending the revised chapters to my thesis advisor for notes and even more revision.

But it's so exciting! There is an end in sight! I will have this  novel done soon, and before you know it you will be seeing it on the bookshelves at bookstores. Mark my words. I will continue to make salads and whatnot to help my husband with the finances but also so that I can focus on my work.


From here on out, my real job is my novel. My hobby is going and making money. 

Ponderings on Magical Realism

Well, its been awhile.


School has just been blowing by so fast! Hence the lack of posting... 


Anyway, as promised, I thought I'd share what I've been learning in my classes. Today's subject is magical realism.


What is magical realism?


That's a very good question, and I've discovered that the answer kind of changes depending on who you ask. But, you've asked me. So here's what I've gathered my class focusing on the genre in Children's and YA literature. 


The term stared with the South American Writers, and they're also the ones that popularized it, but they didn't really begin the genre and it's not limited to them. 


A magical realism text is a book in which fantastic events are included in the text that otherwise maintains a realistic narrative. No one is surprised by these events/ fantastic elements and they are accepted without questions - maybe a bit of marveling. OKAY. In other-words, it mixes magic with the mundane. These magical events/ elements help the characters (and reader) examine the realistic elements of the story through a different lens. For example: (The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber) the appearance of a unicorn in a man's garden highlights the problems in his marriage and then the man and his wife get a divorce. Without the unicorn in the garden, the man might never have noticed the things that were wrong with his marriage. 


You might be saying, "Hey, this sounds a lot like fantasy. What's the difference?"


I'm so glad that you asked. Because I do have an answer to that.


In magical realism these fantastic elements are generally limited to one kind of magic or are somehow related. The magic tends to be localized - the entire world isn't magic, it's the regular mundane world and then there just happens to be a talking elephant. Or a unicorn. Or a yard gnome that's actually a Norse god. 


Also, in magical realism, the story is not littered with tons of magical objects or creatures. The woods aren't filled with pixies, elves, and there aren't any knights that wield magic swords and have enchanted shields. Lastly, the narrator is just a regular ole' human being. 


So here are some magical realism devices:

• Multiple planes of reality: Things/ people can experience realistic events simultaneously in the same place but different times, or vice versa. Being in two places at the same time. Confused? Think about Cameron in Going Bovine and how he's both in the hospital and galavanting around the country 
• Metafiction: Where a fictitious reader enters into a story within a story or where the textual world enters into our world. 
• Inanimate objects may be "alive"
• "Mythical" creatures may appear but not as a normal creature of the place. So - not Harry Potter where they roam the forest.       

Well, that's the best that I've got on the subject. I think that magical realism is this kind of thing where you can read a story and say "oh, yeah, this is magical realism" or "dear, God. This is sooo not it." But it tends to be harder to define. 


Granted, I can't take credit for all these notes. I got them from my class. Which, has turned out to be an amazingly fun class. Woo!


Now, hasn't this post been worth waiting for?

Update from Grad School

Whew!


Things have been cray up here. I have been working hard on my WIP in my tutorial class and working on some short stories in my Magical Realism class....


I'm excited about tutorial today. It'll be the first time chapter 7 gets a good and intense critiquing. I've been going through and re-reading my WIP, getting chapters ready for class, and I've fallen back in love with this story again. Which is AWESOME! It's awful to fall out of love with your WIP... But sometimes I think that's just the nature of the writer/story relationship. We spend too much time together and get sick of one another (this happened to me and my best friend at camp quiet often) and then we start talking to one another again and realize why we enjoyed each other the first time around.


Let's see... Also, I am working on a presentation on how to make a believable antagonist. I'm kind of having a ton of fun with it. The teacher encouraged us to be as creative with these presentations as we want. So mine is involving a handout that looks like a recipe and bars of dark chocolate with quotes about villains on them. Kapow! I'm stoked. I present next week and will share my research here. 


In Magical Realism we've mostly been talking about the books we've read for the class and looking at how the writer does what they do within the story. You may be asking yourself, "What is magical realism?" Well, that is a whole different post entirely. I promise I will try and be better about posting while I am at school... 


I did write my first magical realism story and I'm debating if I'll post it here. I might post a bit to give you a taste. I will tell you it involves the Berlin Wall and I've been having a fun time researching life in East Germany. 


Not that I want to live in the former GDR, but it's cool to learn about a life so different from my own. I mean, they didn't have bananas. I don't even like bananas, but still. It was like they were super intense about the equality of all men that if everyone couldn't have bananas then NO ONE COULD. 


On top of that I've been missing the Husband super much. It's like when you get your wisdom teeth removed. There's this big hole that is this dull pain kind-a all the time, and then you poke it and it's super tender and hurts even more. BUT! I think he's going to visit soon and that would rock soooo much! The only thing that keeps my graduate program from being paradise is that he's not here with me. 


So there's my update! I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post, but I'll make sure to do it once a week! Come back next time for thoughts on Magical Realism.