For Me?

I can't believe it!  The lovely Joanne Brothwell gave me a blog award.  It's my first and I am so touched.  I'm touched by all of you who choose to read along with me each week, actually.  So first of all, thank you!

Now, about that award... It's called the Versatile Blogger award and it comes with a few rules.
1.  Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.
2.  Share 7 things about yourself.
3.  Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason!  (In no particular order...)
4.  Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

Seven random things you may or may not have wanted to know about me:
1.  The only seafood I eat is canned tuna (in tuna salad).  Anything else is a no-go.
2.  I'm deathly allergic to escargot.
3.  I'd go crazy in my office if there was no music on.
4.  Life's too short to drink diet soda.
5.  I started law school before turning 21, which made the welcome-to-law-school pub crawl exponentially less fun.
6.  If I had one wish and I couldn't be for anything sappy (like good health for my family or world peace), I'd ask for an amazing singing voice.  Not only would I be happier, but so would everyone who's ever been subjected to my singing.
7.  I love foreign travel but my husband is afraid of flying. Can you say, vacation conflicts?

And without further ado, here are the 15 blogs that I'd like to recommend to you:
1.  Larissa of Larissa's World
2.  Sheri of Writer's Ally (even though she's already received this one once, she's still awesome)
3.  J.A. Souders of Angels and Demons and Portals, Oh My!
4.  Liz Czukas of her self-titled blog
5.  Nikki Katz of her self-titled blog
6.  Melina at Reading Vacation
7.  Laci Smith of Writing My Chaos (for 1 reason, we have the same cool blog template)
8.  Alex of The Gartner Gazette
9.  Renae of The Siren's Song
10.  Sara B. Larson of her self-titled blog
11.  Shelli of Market My Words
12.  Ezmerelda at Dreamz of a YA Writer
13.  Some awesome California ladies at YA Know
14.  Julie at Writing and Blogging Between Carpools
15.  Mandy and Suzi at Writing Out the Angst
BONUS: 16. A.E. Rought of It's All in the Genes
I hope you check out all of these amazing bloggers.  Some of them have legions of followers, some (like me) only have a few, but they all have something worthwhile to say.

CAPTIVATE: Book Review

Carrie Jones' CAPTIVATE, the highly-anticipated sequel to NEED.

SYNOPSIS:

Zara and her friends thought they’d solved the pixie problem. And they did — sort of. The pixies are all locked away, deep in the woods. But the king’s needs grow stronger each day that he is in captivity, while his control over his people weakens. And it’s enough to draw a new king into town. Astley claims he is different. He claims there are pixies who can live peacefully with humans, that it doesn’t have to be all violence and nastiness all the time. Zara wants to believe him . . . until Astley also claims that she is fated to be his queen.

There is no way Zara would ever turn pixie. And she’s got good friends who will make sure of that. Besides, she and Nick are so in love they’re practically inseparable. But when the very thing Zara wants to protect most is exactly what’s at risk, she is forced to make choices she never imagined. 

If you haven't read NEED, click the link to read the synopsis for it.  I put off reading NEED for quite awhile because it just didn't sound all that great to me.  Boy, was I wrong!  Despite having TWILIGHT in its DNA(as Publishers Weekly said), and being about pixies (which sounded kind of silly), I was drawn in almost immediately and couldn't wait for CAPTIVATE to finally hit the shelves.

Unfortunately, I was not as "captivated"by this book -- for multiple reasons.  

First, the whole "fated to be his pixie queen" thing just screamed WICKED LOVELY to me.  I really adored the WL series and no one can pull it off like Melissa Marr.  It'd be like trying to sing Whitney Houston on American Idol.  You just can't compare.

Second, the first half of the book had sort of an "any day now" feel to it.  Like come on, any day now we can start with the action. Not that things didn't happen in the first half, but they didn't particularly move me to turn the page.  Somehow I knew the real crux of the action hadn't started yet and waiting for that to happen got a little frustrating.

Third, the foreshadowing seemed a little like overkill.  Now, this is a little hard to explain because I do not want to give any spoilers.  There was a definite twist that I did NOT see coming, but because of the foreshadowing I sort of knew it would work out anyway, if that makes sense.

Last, CAPTIVATE feels like a total setup to ENTICE, book 3 - which is looking to be action-packed and drama-filled based on where this one left off.  My problem is that I wasn't all that grabbed by the first half and wondering if the author was struggling to stretch what should have been just two books into three.

All of that being said, once the surprise twist hit, the pace really picked up.  At that point, it became a total page-turner and I did stay up too late to finish it. The characters are just the same as on the ones we came to love in NEED.  Zara has such a great voice and is easy to relate to.  Plus, Jones adds a couple new faces to the mix as well.  I happen to like the new pixie king Astley, but then again I liked Keenan in WL.  (I must fall for the brooding supernatural types.) 

Bonus: all of the chapters start with a humorous pixie tip, like: "Pixies can be annoyingly cryptic.  Don't talk to them.  They'll confuse you and then laugh about it later like movie villains and physics teachers." 

  

Overall, I give CAPTIVATE 2.5 out of 4 coins.  It was better than "ICBW" but not as good as "URA*."  Whether you like it or not though, any NEED fan is going to have to pick up CAPTIVATE in order to get to what promises to be a pins-and-needle third book (ENTICE).  But you might consider saving your pennies and waiting until it's out in paperback (December 7th).  If you're like I was though and simply can't wait, you can get your copy at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

That's me.  Anyone agree or disagree?  If you think I missed something - tell me!  I'd love to know your thoughts.

Tuesday Tip: POV

Point of view is more than just whether you use third person or first.  Authors - rightly so - spend loads of time agonizing over which POV to use in their manuscripts.  While first person is more intimate, third person gives you more freedom because you can describe things/events your MC might not otherwise know.  But once you've made that important decision, there's still more about point of view to consider as you're writing.

Point of view is also about describing the world from the unique perspective of your characters.  For example, how a child sees an oak tree likely will be very different from how an old man sees it.  (This, in fact, is a writing exercise given at SCBWI - Miami by Jen Rofe.)  Try this sometime.  While the child might think a knot in the trunk looks like a wrinkly elephant knee, the only man might see an arthritic joint.

Author Kathleen Duey advises to incorporate description through point of view.  But remember, you can only describe what your MC knows (or doesn't know) about the world.  For example, in Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty, she wouldn't even need to start the first chapter with the date and place.  It's all evident from the word choice and descriptions.
"Please tell me that's not going to be part of my birthday dinner this evening."

I am staring into the hissing face of a cobra. A surprisingly pink tongue slithers in and out of a cruel mouth while an Indian man whose eyes are the blue of blindness inclines his head toward my mother and explains in Hindi that cobras make very good eating.

Mother reaches out a white-gloved finger to stroke the snake's back. "What do you think, Gemma? Now that you're sixteen, will you be dining on cobra?"

The slithery thing makes me shudder. "I think not, thank you."

So did you guess the date and place?  1895, Bombay, India.  The date is obvious not only from the clues like "white-gloved hand" but also from the language.  Gemma doesn't say "gross" or "disgusting."  She responds in a centuries-gone clip.

Jill Santopolo said at that same SCBWI conference, "every word should world build and give context." Take a look back at some of your favorite novels.  How do the authors infuse their worlds with context just through word choice?  Who do you think does this best?

Flashback Friday: Summer Lovin'

For those of you unfamiliar with Flashback Friday, the goal is to get you to think back to your YA experiences and remember the emotions and actions that kept your nerves in a frenzy during your teen years.  For many of us, it's been *awhile.*  Seems to me, a walk down memory lane can only help...



In honor of summer vacation, let's think back to the blistering heat of a summer romance. Were there days at the beach? Nights around a campfire? Watching scary movies under the covers?

This is an easy one for me. I never had a summer romance. Nope, I was about a hundred miles from my then-boyfriend at my dad's house.  Our only "romance" was in the form of love letters back and forth. And since I was away from my friends and my guy, I had time to write plenty of letters.  As did he, thankfully. I just loved getting those thick envelopes addressed in his scrawl, with pages and pages of wonderful nothingness. Seems like most of it was just stream-of-consciousness, but it was bliss to this lonely girl.

In the only one I remember with any clarity, he wrote a quote from the Eagles' song, Peaceful, Easy Feeling:

I like the way your sparkling earrings lay

Against your skin so brown.

And I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight, 

With a billion stars all around.

Two thoughts simultaneously surfaced in my fifteen-year-old brain. (1) Aww... how sweet and (2) Holy crap! He wants to do "it" already.  There was something electric in that raw moment of panic and power.  Of knowing I was desired, but not wanting to be desired quite so much.

Thinking on in now, it seems the panic is often missing from most YA heroines (at least in the books I've been reading).  They typically dive head-first into romance without worrying that they're going too far.  Maybe it's because the authors know they won't write sex into a YA novel?  But shouldn't the girls angst about it a little anyway?

What are your thoughts? Would YA girls be better represented to want to back off the loving just a little?  Have any steamy YA summer romances you care to share to inspire the rest of us?

Musical Writing Prompt

I just love this little-known Snow Patrol song:

Listen closely to the words.  I'm sure there's a YA story about heartbreak lurking in there somewhere.  Does it inspire you??