What happened to my weekend? It’s one of those blinked and missed it deals. I had a little sleep issue on Thursday night and I was up all night and then I had one of those uber sleeps Friday night and Saturday morning I felt like a superhero. But now I feel like I went through a time fold and the entire two days just disappeared. I had books to read and things to do and I am behind! I’m sort of like one of those horses behind kind of behinds at this point. I need to read like 9 million books by Wednesday. No more StumbleUpon for me!
So this is my first NetGalley book and I received it courtesy of Harlequin via in exchange for an honest review. Not that I would have given a dishonest one anyway.
Whose Bed is it Anyway? is the newest release by New Zealand author Natalie Anderson. I really enjoy Harlequin Kiss books because they have those flirtatious and sassy characters and the situations are always fun and quirky. They have a sort of charisma that so many other of the Harlequin branches lack and that is why I really love these books and I chose this title. Natalie Anderson’s style and hero were perfect for the Kiss story.
I was so into reading Still Star-Crossed yesterday that I sort of fell asleep reading it and never got my Tuesday YA up. This book is not in anyway a snorer though. It it beautiful and funny–an incredible tribute to Shakespeare and love stories throughout time.
I found this book recommendation in a YA book chat room on a website, I can’t even remember which one, while on a book crawl over the weekend. Part of my bipolar curse is this fried negative feedback loop where I go on these lost hour book hunts looking for more and more and more until I have lists and Goodread TBRs despite all likelyhood of ever being able to read even a small percentage of them. Still Star-Crossed was love at first sight thing and I swore it would be read straight away.
Augh! Monday. It’s like Sunday night’s bastard sister. I am exhausted and it’s the beginning of the week, my list of things to do is just being made and I already want a break. Cry! Cry! How tough is life!
The book I chose for my Makin’ the Love Monday is something that I actually read a few weeks ago but I loved it and it is deservin’ of the kudos–so here is it’s red ribbon reward and all.
I found this book in my Amazon recommendations and I usually get the weirdest recommendations from Amazon so when I read the synopsis and it sounded good I sort of figured that Amazon must have screwed up and sent me someone else’s book suggestion. Night of the Tiger (This book is free for Kindle at this time) by N.J. Walters is the first book I have read by this author, despite finding she has written more books than the phone book has Smiths, and it was A-mazing. If I had to condense a description of what the beginning of this book is like I would say–imagine Dante’s Inferno, a hodgepodge of Bosch art, the TV show Carnivale, and Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter Series–put them all together, stir them up, shake that upside down, now add a little kitten tail and some mythologically screwed up comics and you get the world as it’s known to Aimee and Roric.
The weekend is nigh and it is time to shake it like it’s a polaroid picture. I have to tell you that I have a game plan that includes finding my underwear, which are in one of 7 boxes called “clothes” still packed in my bedroom and taking part in the Kidney Walk in LA.
If you aren’t planning to have a crazy weekend like mine I am here to recommend a good pick me up for you, a sure pleaser to get you through. Playing Games is actually the second book in the Games series by Jessica Clare (a pseudonym for Jill Myles) and as much as I liked Wicked Games, Playing Games really kicked it’s butt. The characters, Dean and Abby do end up in The World Race but the two books don’t rely so heavily on a continuous story that you need to read them in order or create a reason as to why you wouldn’t be able to read this book as a stand alone. That said, I did really adore Abby in Wicked Games and Jill Myles ability to create the tension and skullduggery of a reality show is so impressive that the book really is a very good read. Just not as good as Playing Games.
I am exhausted. I have spent the last few weeks packing and moving and my wagon is dragin’ and my caboose is loose. Boy does that sound as if my butt is in a rather saggy and in an unbecoming state. I have lost almost 30 lbs since the end of June, my bottom is not in as bad a state as it was three months ago–it’s just tired. Now that I have spent a paragraph talking about my tuckus let’s get back on track.
In the last few days of August two of my favorite authors released books I had been waiting forever for. Tijan’s Broken and Screwed 2 came out on August 30 and on the 27th of August Jennifer L. Armentrout released Origins from her Lux series. Thank God and the way things work for me having a seven hour plane ride so I could really dig in on my way home, before all hell broke loose and I was waist deep in boxes and the internet was gone while I was in moving limbo, so that I could finish one of them.
I’m trying something new. I have been home in Pennsylvania visiting family for the last few weeks and my mom has an internet package conceived by a real miser and a connection which rivals the stability of a house of cards and playing telephone with two cans and a piece of string. Soon I will be going home and I will miss my family but I will have a little more routine. This I do pledge my oath… until the time when I no longer pledge my oath.
So I have been reading tons of books. It has been raining a lot and I commandeer the couch in those times when the sky can no longer keep Mother Nature’s tears at bay. More than a handful were worthy of recommendations and if you want to go to my Goodreads and look up my August 2013 reviews you can find me on the website by searching me by my name.
It has been an age. I would like to say that it hasn’t been a summer lovin’ happened so fast sort of deal that has had me away. Alas, it has been a severe bout of ups and downs. There are four or five drafts in my WordPress post history, but they are either–not edited, not linked to anything or not finished. But today is my day. This is going to be a done deal. What makes me say that? Let me tell you. I have managed to do one of those things that makes me feel completely great about the world at large I woke up at 5am. I love early mornings. They make me feel as if I am the only person in the world and they make me super productive. Other than a 7am dentist appointment I own this day.
So the topic of this blog post is going to be erotica. I proudly wave my smut flag! I actually didn’t realize that there was a difference between romance and erotic romance until about two years ago. I grew up reading both and just thought they were the same thing. Some books were really hot and some were really sweet. I grew up in the country with the population of 1000 people in my town. I bought my books at a used bookstore where I would just go in and say, “Fill up my bag”, at yard sales or at the grocery store. It was just hit and miss in my head. I was lucky because a lot of time a relative would have pity on me and second hand me some subscription books to me. It was paydirt when I found a dirty one with dog-eared pages.
But today I am dog-earring authors for you. I am going to give you some recommendations for some of the bestest ones that I like the most and the series I feel deserve the plug. I had a list of twelve authors and then I tried to slim it down to authors with three or more books and then I thought I would mention both of Suzanne Wright’s series (her other series is one called Deep in Your Veins and it is fantastic, but I wouldn’t really file it under erotica.) I also thought I would sneak Jay Crownover’s Marked Men in here but when I put it in I actually realized that the post was getting way too long. (I swear Jay, I will give you lots of love in a post in the near future.)
Elle Aycart
I found the first book of Elle Aycart’s Bowen series, More Than Meets the Ink, on Amazon last summer either free or for $.99. I remember starting it at bedtime and not being able to put it down until I finished it. Then a few weeks ago I came across the book Heavy Issues and I no recollection of the first Bowen book when I started reading the second. You have to keep in mind that I have read 500 books between then and now so it’s no reflection on the first book. It didn’t matter to me in the least though because Heavy Issues blew me away. It was down and dirty from the moment I saw the first spark between Cole and Christy and I knew the the inferno was quick to follow.
Elle Aycart commands her reader to read on and want more. She has a firm grasp of sensuality and eroticism and her ability to weave a chemistry that burns bright and out of control is her specialty. She doesn’t shy away from sexual fantasy and pushes the boundaries in a way that ask the reader to play with the idea of the line between good fun and too far. And she makes it sound like there is no limit that takes you too far.
I will make the point though that after finishing Heavy Issues I bought Inked Ever After. I suddenly remembered Tate and James. I don’t remember them being as kinky as they were in the novella but I did remember their book though. I also visited Elle Aycart’s blog and I read the two little stories, Epilogue Inked Ever After & Happy Valentine’s Day from the Bowen Brothers. It’s a great series. I never used to read all the little extra parts of book series and then I got hooked. I find them to be a lot like Swedish Fish. It’s one and then the bag.
The Bowen series is a contemporary erotic series that has been reviewed on Goodreads. Elle Aycart can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.
Olivia Cunning The Sinners on Tour series is possibly one of the best rock and roll series I have read. So many out there make rockers out to be something somewhere between moody poets and party frat guys with a lot of tattoos who play guitars. Rockers are gritty, nasty, dirty talking, quickie-takin’, love’em and leave’em, forget your name, lose your number kind of guys. Olivia Cunning writes them that way. They convince you to do things that you wouldn’t tell your best friend. You might even slut shame yourself for it after, but you’d do it in a second if they asked you to do it again. That is the guys of Sinners.
If you are looking for a casual walk through an erotic book the Sinners on Tour books are not for you. These books are beautifully delectable in their explicitness. Over the 5 books many different erotic topics are traversed, from kinky exploration to mènage relations. I’m sure that people who are deeply into certain aspects of each of the specific topics may have issues with how Olivia Cunning wrote and expressed the acts and that is just too bad. Those of us who read for the joy of entertainment will be happy because it is an artform to draw the images that she creates with her descriptions of the libidinous acts of her characters whether or not they are the reality of others. I liked all the books but I could read Jace’s, Hot Ticket, over and over again. He is my favorite Sinner, I love me a wounded hero.
Olivia Cunning can be found on Twitter and Facebook. She has a new book coming soon from her One Night with Sole Regret series. More rockers!
Suzanne Wright
It wasn’t long ago that I became a fan of Suzanne Wright. I had fallen into a werewolf reading spree and I was downloading shifter books from Amazon at a rate that made my husband threaten to cancel my credit card. I came across the book Feral Sins and I judged it by it’s cover and figured it would be pretty ridiculous but fulfill my need to glut on shifter books. I was wrong and never happier to be so. The book was so very good that I went on a Suzanne Wright glut. Taryn, the heroine, is one of my all time favorite female characters. She is strong and funny and she does not put up with anyone ever. Especially not Greta, but they are pretty cute together. The attraction between her and Trey can only be measured by degrees. They work one another up, wear one another down and create some of the fiercest sweat scenes.
I really enjoy alpha males and Trey is territorial and possessive and it makes him act aggressive, arrogant and like an asshole and Taryn fights him tooth and nail which just means that the sex is off the charts. Suzanne Wright’s characters have a very earthy sensuality. It’s extremely visceral and reading it is unlike contemporary romance eroticism because it feels a great deal more like a natural animal magnetism and the urge to possess, overpower and control. It’s all about a male wanting to claim his female. It’s not fucking it’s mating. That being the case Suzanne Wright takes her readers to a place that is quite basic. A fundamental appetite between two sexes to come together and feed a hunger of a never-ending lust.
The Phoenix Pack series is very good although I do feel that both female characters in the two books are very similar. This book series is one of the strongest shifter books series. There are a great many erotic shifter books out there. I think there is actually a biblical commandment that says, Thou shall go forth and write shifter-porn. I really feel that Suzanne has the best blend of story and smut to balance one another and her sexplosions are hot enough to keep you well-heated without making you hide all traces of the book from your mother.
Cherise Sinclair
Speaking of hiding books from your mother. I read Masters of Club Shadowlands and got really interested in reading more BDSM books and looked up some more titles. I found that there are some really, really titilating books out there that I was not ready to read just yet. This book series by Cherise Sinclair is pretty lightweight but still very kinky. Or I guess that is my uneducated opinion, but I don’t know my BDSM very well. However in my eyes this is very good erotica.
The first book left me somewhere around meh and what the hell? I didn’t know what to think so I read the second. I came away with kink where someone says ‘Sir’ is pretty hot. It’s amazing how many different ways to tie someone up are out there. Is this what they train Boy Scouts for? I actually started to wonder if I could get a tour of a club just to see what Club Shadowland would look like. Could I Google BDSM and my area and pray I found the “nice” dirty playground? Please, Sir, can I come and just window shop? My mother and husband would never let me be your friend. They don’t let me put strangers in my mouth. Would any of that work?
Cherise Sinclair responsibly writes her books with disclaimers at the beginning of each one discouraging readers from ignorantly attempting anything they read in her books at their homes with people who are not properly educated in how to perform the acts described. Her knowledge is incredible and she is very articulate regarding the sensations and mindset of her characters. Those characters are varied and the intensity of their feelings and emotions add a realism and depth to the stories. I will not mislead you, a great deal of the stories is spent on tactile delights. Those delights are succinctly spelled out to you in ways that give you a very good idea of what someone who is experiencing that sexual activity might be achieving, I say achieving because it isn’t always as simple as orgasm, and what that relationship is about at that time. A great deal of the sex works on voyeurism and fantasy. That doesn’t mean that the books lack actual plots. The characters are individuals and the secondary characters do exist and they play into the story of other books to support an overall story arc. There is a cohesiveness and complexity beyond the deviant and permissive sex. Most of the books I recommend in this list are a M/F, one on one conventional relationship. A D/s relationship is a lifestyle choice. These books may not be for everyone.
Cherise Sinclair can be found on Twitter and Facebook. The eighth Shadowlands book will be coming soon
Laurann Dohner
This is probably one of my most favorite authors. I actually read a book by her that I really didn’t like before I read any of her other books and I was confused because the book, Mating Set, had almost 4 stars on Goodreads. It felt very silly and the characters seemed unrelatable, I actually disliked them both. But I am not one of those people who have author prejudices. I have been known to read authors time and time again despite not liking their books time after time. My husband makes fun of me constantly. I am pessimistic about almost everything else in my life but I’m the eternal optimist about books. I have faith that eventually it will get better. And if I hadn’t thought this, I would have missed what has quickly become one of my favorite series.
The New Species books are a Sci-fi series about a medical/science corporation that has spent the last twenty or so years testing on humans splicing their DNA with animal DNA. They have kept the hybrids in a facility experimenting on them and trying to breed them and perfect them. Not being human they react by instinct, are extremely primal and now that they are free they are trying to control their animal urges. The humans of the world are suspicious of them and the New Species just want to live in peace. Things become a bit more complex in the first book when Fury meets Ellie and New Species/Human relations goes to the next level. New Species who find their females basically lose control and act on the need to behave as their primative impulse would with their mate. This being the case in most of the books the sex scenes begin early on in the story and they literally burn the ink off the pages. I’m always confused if I’m including the purring and growling as dirty talk or not, but it always feels a lot to me like her men know all the sexy words to say.
Laurann Dohner has also created a great world. The secondary characters have grown since the first book to a true community and if you have been paying attention you can tell them all apart. Earlier characters are often mentioned in later books and you hear updates about prior couples relationships and families. –Oh by the way, did I mention, they purr? Think about that for a second. A man that purrs when he goes south. No more batteries and you can take him everywhere you go.
The other series of hers that I recommend is Cyborg Seduction. (The name makes me imagine the big cyborgs on Battlestar Galactica trying to hump a trash compactor and I don’t know why.–Sorry Ms. Dohner) I have only read the first two, Burning Up Flint and Kissing Steele, so far but the concept is very compelling–and despite it breaking one of my main reading rules–which is no cowboys, no Christmas stories and no aliens, the struggle between the Cyborgs and humans is very interesting. They are not full books like the New Species books, I would call them novellas. Before you think that this might be metal men with human women let me assure you that that is not the case. Cyborgs in this world are a combination of humans with some cybernetic improvements. They have the ability to reproduce children and they have all the functions of a human being, they are just superior in every way.
The Cyborg books have their own brand of steaminess. It is very different than New Species. There is a great deal of dub-con involved. It works both ways between both sexes. Cyborgs can turn on and off their emotions so their is a great deal of using sex as a tool. It’s a whole different element than the other world she writes about. A great deal more controversial sex issues. But when she writes the flesh-smacking-flesh scenes they sizzle.
Both series are absolutely addicting and Laurann Dohner is really the queen of something I once termed on Goodreads as ‘the big salami train’. I appreciate that she has a world in her mind where most of my ex-boyfriends don’t live. In both of her series, the New Species and Cyborg Seduction series the men are the altered characters and the females are humans (I haven’t finished all the books as of the date of this blog post). Both series males have alpha male aspects of a caveman, are incredibly good looking, are more talented with their tongue than Kobe Bryant was playing ball and they are capable of turning a woman to jelly within ten minutes.
Laurann Dohner can be found on her blog, Twitter and Facebook. She is published by Ellora’s Cave, which is one of the largest publishers of erotic romance books. Which is a comment not a plug persay. I mention it because this is a blog post about erotica. I have no affiliation with Ellora’s Cave.
Thank you for reading my post today. I hope it was helpful
Before Harry Potter and Twilight, movies that were adapted from books were usually general fiction with the focus group being just about anyone who would pay for a ticket. Occasionally there were movies that were for a specific audience; Disney films, Lucas films, Larry and Andy Wachowsky adaptions or Steven Spielberg productions. Some made a lot of money and others barely made any impression at all.
Early on, the basis for adaptations included novels–memoirs, comics, plays and in some cases news reports and non-fiction. Cinema banked on the new technology that allowed for the more traditional form of public theater to reach an audience that was titillated by innovation. The tradition of communal entertainment–public execution, sports events, theater, vaudeville, operas, music halls and street performance evolved through time and blossomed with the advent of film.
In the late 1880’s the movie camera was invented and motion pictures, silent films at the time, were shown at social events like carnivals and circuses. People marvelled at this new creation and news of it spread quickly. By the early 20th century the media was sending social and political messages attached to motion pictures to movie viewers and cinema devotees.
That is when the market of film adaptation took root. Some of the earliest stories that made it to the silver screen included, The Little Match Girl, Sherlock Holmes Baffled, Alice in Wonderland and From the Earth to the Moon. I personally wonder if the makers of those films could even conceive of the birth of mass media that would follow. Or the access to film entertainment that would come in future times.
Some of the most popular classic movies were Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, adapted from Bram Stoker‘s novel written in 1897. Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel Frankenstein, that solidified the fame of Boris Karloff. Technicolor wonder, The Wizard of Oz, which shot Judy Garland’s star into the night sky. Interestingly, at the time that The Wizard of Oz was released it wasn’t received well. Later when it was shown on television the film found a revival of interest. While other films like Gone With The Wind, starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara, received 10 Academy Awards the year after it’s release. Clark Gable made movie-goers swoon when a handsome Rhett Butler mutter the famous words, “My dear, I don’t give a damn” on film.
Not only were novels adapted from books, comic books and graphic novels began to make a real splash as well. Superman was brought to life by Christopher Reeve. Batman became popular when first adapted by Tim Burton and then reintroduced when Christopher Nolan, rebooting the winged hero with the Dark Knight Trilogy. Marvel flooded the market with Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spiderman, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the rather terrible Daredevil.
In 2001 when J.K. Rowling’s young adult books, Harry Potter, were given a new life in film, and a new genre of book adaptations became popular. Prior to Harry Potter fame, young adult books might occassionally be adapted to television with a small demographic of viewers. The Jason Katims TV show Roswell, which was inspired by the Melinda Metz books Roswell High, is a good example. The response to Rowling’s already incredibly popular books was extraordinary. The interest in the teen genre exploded and soon after other young adult books were being shopped to studios hoping to be picked up for cinema and television.
Stephanie Meyer’sTwilight Saga grossed over 390 million worldwide with it’s first film alone. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattenson’s names began to be on the tips of lips everywhere making them very appealing to the paparazzi. The following four films–New Moon, Eclipse and the two Breaking Dawn films created more and more of a stir. The books, which follow the love affair between a human girl and her vampire boyfriend, fed the interests of teenagers everywhere and soon other vampire novels began to get a great deal of attention from producers and studios.
L.J. Smith‘s Vampire Diaries premiered on the CW channel in 2009, the cast included teenage heartthrob Ian Somerhalder, and millions tuned in every week for more Damon Salvatore. Originally written in 1991, The trilogy included the titles of The Awakening, The Struggle and The Fury. After almost twenty years L.J. Smith returned to the literary world of Mystic Falls to write even more books based on the same characters. Currently the book series contains twelve books. Personally, I think that the original three were pretty bad. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that though.
Probably the newest Vampire series to have caught Hollywood’s attention is Vampire Academy, creation of author Richelle Mead. In six books the story of Rose Hathaway and her best friend Lissa Dragomi stretches from their first introduction ofSt. Vladimir’s Academy to ultimate domination. A dark world of power struggle and forbidden love fill the pages. The film, Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters, is currently in the process of casting actors. Zoey Deutch and Danila Kozlovsky will be playing the parts of Rose and Dimitri. No one else has been announced at this time.
But young adult adaptations aren’t all about bloodsuckers. There are numerous novels being slated for film and the genre varies.
In 2012 viewers flocked to movie theaters to see the first installment of Suzanne Collins dystopian tale, The Hunger Games. The novel is about Katniss Everdeen, a teen who lives in a world segregated by districts distinguished by wealth, social status and political strain. Jennifer Lawerence received critical acclaim for her portrayal of the character as a role model for young girls, strong and intelligent. The trials and tribulations of Katniss and Peta mark a path that pairs them together in order to survive The Hunger Games.
Philip Pullman’s popular fantasy books, His Dark Materials Trilogy, became known as one of the least liked film adaptations of the last decade. The Golden Compass, also known as Northern Lights, was released in 2007. A key component of the books is the religious implications of the importance of the human soul. The adaptation attempted to play down the controversial elements of Christian faith. By obscuring the original story the plot fell short. Despite the stunning visual effects fans were unhappy and the film flopped.
Currently in the process of being filmed is Cassandra Clare’sCity of Bones. The approval and interest of fans regarding the first book adaptation of the The Mortal Instruments was rewarded when a green light was given for the second book prior to the finish of the first. The Mortal Instruments books have a large cast of characters and fans debated and commented on Clare’s website as they were cast. Clary Fray and Jace Wayland, played by Lily Collins and Jaime Campbell-Bower, are the main concern of the first three novels. Clare later built on the initial trilogy adding more books. The voice of Clary, who dominates the books–City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass is joined by characters, Simon Lewis, Alec Lightwood and Jace Wayland/Lightwood, in the books that follow.
Veronica Roth’sDivergent series, another dystopian society book, has garnered a good deal of fandom squeeing. The reaction to the casting of the two main characters, Four–Theo James, and Tris–Shailene Woodley has been positive. The plot, a world of a five faction society based on specific virtues, spends a great deal of time focusing on the concept of political control. Tris, is born to one faction but at her sixteenth birthday she is tested and finds she can choose another. In the faction she has choosen, the strongest and most fearless of those in that society, things become suspect. Soon she discovers a plot to control her faction and use them as a tool to control the others.
The Fault in Our Stars is a heart wrenching story of two young people living with cancer. Written by contemporary American writer and YouTube vloggerJohn Green, The Fault in Our Stars looks at the poignancy and fraility of youth. Faced with the horrors of cancer, The hero, Augustus Waters, waxes poetic and philosophically searches for meaning in all things. The story is told from heroine, Hazel’s, POV and reveals a girl who is surviving cancer rather than dying from it. There has been some controversy by book reviewers that Green was cashing in on tragedy, most readers don’t agree. Overall the book has been celebrated for it’s meaningful message and noteable quotes.
“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
The woman who acted as guide to many females–pre-teens and young adults for over forty years is finally seeing one of her novels adapted to film. Judy Blume, winner of over 90 literary awardshas co-written the screenplay of Tiger Eyes with her son Larry Blume. Released in limited theaters on June 7, 2013 the plot is a look at a young girl’s grief at the loss of a parent. Blume’s celebrated insight and wisdom has addressed topics from masturbation to bullying and all those issues that touch nearly every girl in between those two things.
A great many adaptations are quite faithful to their inspiration. Like all things which go from the hand of one person to another–views, ideas and prominent points change. As a reader you may think one adaptation is a success and another is a travesty. It’s either great to see something you imagined interpreted in a similar fashion to your own ideas. Or it is heartbreaking to see a novel you enjoyed massacred. I am a firm believer in letting your voice be heard. Never be shy, if you can’t find a place to comment on the things you like or dislike publically, tell a friend. Opinions might be a little like buttholes, but no one can ever say you are better off without one. After all, that just means you are full of shit.
This has been a very long and involved look at the history and result of adaptation. Thank you for sticking with me and seeing it through.
I am wrecked on an epic scale. I wrote for roughly nine hours today and got about 8,000 words down. I spent about four of those hours rewritting a part of chapter 2 that wasn’t working. It was a very emotional part and I redid it a few times before I felt like I got it right. The chapter came in at just over 10,000 words which is really long but it was the most natural place to end it.
I have been running extremely high. If that sounds a little random then you have missed the fact that I am bipolar from previous posts. The productive place between a touch of hypomania and running high is sort of blurry. Basically, I’m kicking out all sorts of stuff and it is coherent and rather good. It is at that thin line though, where the way my mind is bombarded with ideas and dialogue for what I am working on is distracting to an extreme and I don’t take enough notice of everything around me. Driving home yesterday from an appointment was an adventure in stop lights on the orange side or yellow and covering a good part of the trip on auto-pilot. I was trying to solve a problem about how advanced the alternate world in Murmur of Souls was going to be.
What have I been so pre-occupied about? I have spoken vaguely of The Soul Wars Trilogy and for the most part it was because for a little while I didn’t really understand the breadth and depth of the story. Knowing that you need a truly BAD guy, with a lot of sex appeal and a snarky attitude isn’t enough to base a book on. I had Min worked out from the start. She was always going to be above average in intelligence and fiery. And I knew Jett’s family and Trist’s place. Not a lot to go by.
Over the last week, with the power of hypomania, I have filled a one-subject notebook with dialogue, new characters and a very well thought out story arc for the entire trilogy. I have a few great friends reading it as I go, giving me feedback and telling me where things seem awkward or unlikely. And the man who feeds my turtles and changes the litter in my bathroom, also known as my husband, helped me find the images for all three books. I also bought the copyright for the image for le Cirque at the same time. The few other plans I have for keeping me working is to get Murmur up on Wattpad to see what the thoughts of people I don’t know might be. That will be on the list of ‘to-do’s’ for next week
I don’t have it in me to write a blog entry as long as my normal one on the tails of the full day I put in while I plugged away today. I’m going to just cut and paste a small portion of today’s labor into the bottom of this and call it a night.
This is Min and Jet.
“Vela, go get Min’s food.” His voice was commanding. I still had her hand and my grip tightened. My voice brokered no debate as I said, “Vela get me a plastic bag and a sharp knife. Jett wants me to start freeing him from his limbs.” That stupid chuckle filled the dark. I hated him. My conscience told me that involving Vela in our battle of wills wasn’t fair. I released her and softened my voice. “I’m fine. I will come get some food later. Why don’t you go and relax. Don’t worry.” I listened to her light steps lead to the door and when it opened light briefly flooded the entrance. Wordlessly she shut it behind her. “Why are you like that?” Frustration had me asking with gritted teeth. I didn’t hear him but I felt him coming closer. I could see the smirk that he had on his face in my minds eye even before I hear it in his voice. “Wonderful? Devastating?Compelling? Sexy? Brilliant? Unforgettable?” “No. Mentally defective. Unlikeable. Tiresome. Creepy. You were sitting in the dark while I slept. Who does that?” “The way you compliment me makes me wonder if your words mean what you think they mean. Having been brought up human probably means that you lacked an education. I had hopes that you would be bright enough that I could be challenged. Sadly, speaking to you is the equivalent of engaging conversation with a child.” “Is this really all you’re about, Jett. Irritating others? You really need to get a life.” I felt his weight added to the bed near my feet. Noah and Michael were the only two guys that had ever been in my bedroom. My brother was never an issue and Noah was as safe to have there as Michael was. Jett on my bed felt a little too real. “I have thought about taking yours. Think about that. Then I would have two.”
Thanks a bunch for reading this. I hope you enjoyed it.
I write this sharing my lap desk with a big uncaring white fluff ball named Frankie. He likes to push the keys and sit on top of the computer so we stage laptop wars. So far we are about 50/50. I’m not really the one in authority here.
This week I read a truly incredible book by one of those authors that no one knows but really should be on the lips of everyone. Fallen Crest High by Tijan was a look outside the box in a way that killed the memory of the many formulaic books I have read lately. It bled dysfunction, unlikely alliances, the value of friendships and perceptions. This book was written very well, the characters were engaging and the power struggling and backstabbing feed my hunger for angst and trouble. I have not read any of Tijan’s other books but I did go right to Amazon and downloaded Broken and Screwed and the Jaded series as soon as I finished Fallen Crest High. When a book as good as this comes around it literally rocks your entire world and the impression left by this sort of story demands to be shared with anyone who will listen. I hope you are listening. Tijan’s Facebook page, Tijan’s Books, posts updates of the novels she is in the process of writing. I love authors who are so accessible and generous.
But how does one go about writing broken and ruined characters successfully?
So many authors try so hard to play the broken and tragic tales of one of their characters they meet with defeat. They are so hung up on the triggering event that the symptoms and aftermath get lost in the plot. Or they get so lost in the dark emotions and troubled behavior of a damaged hero or heroine that the ultimate reveal comes across as insignificant. It’s hard to write something real if you have never experienced or witnessed it yourself. Writing fiction about painful and difficult times resulting in horrific personal crises isn’t as simple as making up a tale of woe and prescribing cliched motives and villainous villains to milk a response. You have to actually make your reader feel like they have never felt so much pain, confusion, terror, distress, hopeful hopelessness and vulnerability from a narrative of this type before.
Trauma effects people in different ways but it almost always comes with a desperate anger and a feeling of hollowness or emptiness that removes the victim from the world of all the people around them. The isolation that a troubled person goes through may be of their own making or by being stigmatised as different from others in regards to the incident. Sometimes life is simple. You are made or broken and from that you grow into a stronger person. Most people aren’t really that lucky and pain, anger, helplessness win. That feeling of being other in a broken world can’t be solved with a chat with a therapist or pill. When you can’t talk it out and it just plows through your life the experience can live in your mind playing over and over again. When you come out on the other end it’s incredible. For others, luck doesn’t bless you that way and destroying who you are seems like the only option. When that happens you know you are going down and you no longer care who you bring with you. The injuries you have pull you into your own small world where you hurt so much you fail to see anyone else’s pain. And the feelings you have create a place all it’s own where people have to pay for what has been to you. Even the ones who are innocent.
That is reality. This is how people respond to abuse, tragedy and trauma. Knowing this happens in life makes for great writing. Assuming something like this from TV dramas, thriller movies and other books which address trauma, stress and tragedy isn’t enough. Writing a good story comes from writing what you know.
In fiction of this vein the author is creating a character that has suffered something monumental and that character’s story isn’t necessarily the only one that is being told. Authors say lot about themselves by showing how human nature works in their own minds by what they write. The violation or unjustice, how the world around the victim reacts and what the result of those actions are; All of that is a product of an author’s ability to see the inner turmoil and the greater gift of interaction. Topics such as cancer, suicide, rape, child or domestic abuse, assault, mental illness, family dysfunction, social or unspecified anxiety, and death (this list could really go on into infinity), mold characters just as they mold real people. Knowledge is a powerful thing and authors with knowledge can play God in the written sense.
I have been reading all sorts of books for most of my life and I have probably read thousands of books which have a life lesson contained within the wrappings of personal tragedy. I can remember the first book of this sort that really left a mark on me. A teenage author by the name of Cyn-Forshay Lunsford wrote a book in 1986 called Walk Through Cold Fire. It was a great story of a girl who had a pretty shitty life moving to stay with other family for a summer. The events which occur impact her life in pretty horrible way. As you can see from that Amazon link the book isn’t available in e-book format and it’s out of print. So unless you can find it in a used bookstore, like I did about ten years ago, the likelyhood of you getting to read this great piece of fiction is probably pretty slim.
Still I give the author props because the way she commanded that these characters matter in a world where it didn’t seem that people did was impressive. Walk Through Cold Fire was written with a rawness and truth that left me feeling every one of Desiree’s crushing burdens at the end of the book. I think it was the first book I read that didn’t have a happy ending. It felt real. To my youthful mind fantasy was so much more fun. But as I read and read and read during my pre-teens and teen years, the only book that really sticks out is Cyn-Forshay Lunsford’s. I can’t tell you the plot of too many of the Silhouette Young Adult Books I read. And I can tell you that the only thing I remember from the first couple of Sweet Valley High books is that one of the characters names was Fiona. And I only remember that because from that point on I wanted to change my name to that. I think as a young girl of twelve Walk Through Cold Fire actually changed something in me. It made me see the world differently.
By no means is that the only title that I recommend that would illicit a telling reaction. There are the classic S.E. Hinton books The Outsiders and Rumble fish. Both powerful stories about life on hard times. Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, which told the tale of a jaded and lost generation in the middle of the 1980’s. The memoir of Susanna Keyson, Girl Interrupted, which I remember made me fear the possibility of something similar happening to me. All those were published before a time that really is remembered by the younger readers who are reading now. I don’t think they can relate with the times or culture before 2000, which is just unfortunate because the message that was being made at that particular times of those novels spoke volumes.
Of current books that I have read this past year, my tastes have run the gamut from terminal illness to incest and almost everything in between. Some to mention would be Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma, a book set in Great Britain about a truly broken family in which a brother and sister find themselves in a taboo relationship. The Fault in Our Stars by the incredible John Green. His book is being adapted into a movie. If the film impacts viewers half as much as the book did me no one will leave that theater with a dry eye.
A very dark and disturbing view into sex trafficking with the Dark Duet books by C.J. Roberts will leave you wondering how the hell something like this exists. Incredible and frightening. Jeffery Euginedes debut novel The Virgin Suicides was a little of everything. You know, I laughed, I cried, I read it multiple times. Nicole Reed’s Ruining Series was a road through a dark hell of a young girl just plagued with trauma and tragedy. Colleen Hoover hit on some very touchy subjects in Hopeless. Honestly the end of her book left me a bit shocked, Sky’s reunion with her father was so disquieting and I remember the pivotal part where I just shook my head and said, “What in hell did I just read?”. Jessica Sorensen left me speechless with her book The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden. The violation of Callie was just beyond what one would assume and Kayden’s family life was sickening but so often reality. Just the idea that they could get past their issues in any small way made this book pure gold. And I can’t forget Alice Sebold with her compelling story The Lovely Bones. I had read her memoir which told of her own rape and fight for justice in Lucky. She is a strong woman for making it through that. And writing what happened one time was a lot to admire, writing the horror a second time takes fortitude and courage.
I recommend every book that I have mentioned above. Read them once for me and then again for you. It takes a special author to develop stories that stage horrific and hopeless events in a way that pulls you out of your comfort zone but allows you to think that somewhere in all that hell something more might exist. Sometimes the ending is vicious and as a reader, even you feel violated. Personally, I see that as a great accomplishment on the writer’s behalf. I have always been fond of saying, “good or bad, at least you aren’t indifferent.” Give me a story that makes my heart hurt, my gut wrench and my mind feel like I just survived something most people can’t live through.
I congratulate the authors who attempt and succeed to touch on issues that make readers ill at ease. Sometimes you need to be shaken up. Life isn’t just hot guys and girls, living haphazardly, and fighting with parents, siblings and best pals. Sometimes living is hard. And surviving is near impossible. There is crime, hate, impossible odds, terror, heartbreak, pain and shame that make it so hard to breathe that you just suffocate on the thought of the next moment. Awful and alarming things happen to people you know all the time. Maybe they don’t talk about it. Maybe they can’t. Books that pull you away from your own safety, leading you through someone else’s bottomless pit, give you a better sense of humanity. Sometimes having your world flip upside down can make everything around you mean a little more.
Thanks for reading this.
Edited because I mistyped Jessica Sorensen’s name as Jennifer. My apologies.
What happened to my weekend? It’s one of those blinked and missed it deals. I had a little sleep issue on Thursday night and I was up all night and then I had one of those uber sleeps Friday night and Saturday morning I felt like a superhero. But now I feel like I went through a time fold and the entire two days just disappeared. I had books to read and things to do and I am behind! I’m sort of like one of those horses behind kind of behinds at this point. I need to read like 9 million books by Wednesday. No more StumbleUpon for me!
