Just One Week Left…

…till Mockingjay (third and final installment in the wildly popular Hunger Games trilogy) is released!!

Have you pre-ordered your copy?

And Peeta? or Gale?

:-)

There's a Viking in the Building!

I've been out of college for five years, but I still feel like the year really begins in late August, not January. Fall semester! New stuff to learn! Autumn! Jeans and converse and long sleeves and socks!

…That is if you happen to live in a state where you have autumn and can wear the aforementioned jeans and converse and long sleeves and socks before the end of November. But I'm quibbling. Hopefully us poor Arizonians will get out of the 100s sometime soon and at least down into the 90s. Hopefully.

But that's really beside the point. What I'm saying is, life has been completely crazy this summer. I've moved across town, nearly tore the bumper off my poor car by backing into a pole, painted a room, learned how to cook chicken, watched all seven seasons of Buffy, spent a week in Georgia eating ridiculously amazing watermelon, continued staunchly refusing to eat raw tomatoes (because I don't like them, okay??), and got a grand total of absolutely nothing done on that novel revision I started back in March. Not to mention I haven't been blogging, either.

What I'm saying is, it's time for the fall semester, which means a new year and a new beginning and a new chance to dive back into noveling and blogging and getting stuff done. I don't have to wait for January! The time is now!! I am novelist, hear me RAWRRRRR!!!!

**puts on a horned helmet brandishes a battle-axe, and hollers like a viking**

Erm. Anyways. Guess I'd better get to it then, right?

I am, in fact, still breathing

Just a quick note to assure any readers still out there that I have not fallen of the face of the planet! I'm moving across town this weekend and as my world has thus been in a terrible state of upheaval, I haven't had the chance to do any noveling—let alone blogging—for the last several weeks. But never fear, faithful ones! I shall return soon with a vengeance, gracing the blogosphere with my much-missed witticisms.

Until then, I had better go find some lunch. And keep packing.

Will Write for Motivation

So I have a bad case of the blahs and have been procrastinating like a bandit on that revision lately. I've written exactly one scene and a couple of sentences this week and that is IT. I still haven't finished chapter five, even though I'm really close!! I've got pages upon pages left to get through of my Revision Check-list, and even though it's laid out in lovely color-coded order, it all seems like such an overwhelming amount of work and I'm feeling like I'll never get it done and if I do it won't matter anyway. At the same time, of course, I know very well that this novel is Important and might actually be The One and I just can't give up!!!

I clearly need some motivation beyond the someday-maybe-it'll-be-all-shiny-and-published variety. Any suggestions? Threats? Bribery? Horrifying ninja monkeys of doom?

What do you do to stay motivated???

Better late than never

So this post is shamefully overdue. Sadly this is not because of werewolf attacks or dimension-transporting tornadoes or anything remotely interesting. I've mostly just been feeling lazy and didn't have anything to blog about. True facts. But in any case, it's time for some UPDATES!

Writing:
I'm still working on revisions for Seer, and at this rate will probably be working on them until the end of time. I'm in chapter five. Of twenty-nine. Needless to say it's going SLOWLY, and I will in no way be finished by the end of June. On the plus side, though, I'm happy with the changes so far. I'm focusing mainly on fixing my structure/pacing, and it seems to be working. Hopefully it'll start going faster sometime soon.

I also keep poking at On Journeys Bound, the novel that refuses to leave me alone; I've written at least a couple thousand new words on this thing but am still floundering in the depths of the Dreaded Middle. I really need to finish. I've been working on this draft for a grand total of four years—not steadily, of course, but still.

I just read through the 41k of my failed Nano novel from last November, and you know what? It wasn't that bad. Bits of it were actually pretty interesting. I get why I abandoned it and it does need some restructuring, but I think there's definitely hope. Not that I know when I'll ever have time to get back to it, but you'll have that.

Reading:
I'm way too lazy to properly review the fabulous books I've read lately, so you just get a couple of sentences each:

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead—this year's Newberry Award winner is set in the late seventies and follows the adventures of a twelve-year-old girl who starts receiving mysterious notes from the future. It's kinda like Fire and Hemlock meets Doctor Who. Really lovely writing.

The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold—an adult fantasy filled with well-drawn characters, fascinating settings, and intriguing philosophical ponderings. It's hard to explain. But quite good.

The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff—I read this back in high school and though I remembered liking it didn't actually remember that much about it, so I re-read it. LOVELY book. Its style is a little old-fashioned (it was written in the fifties), but I really liked that about it—makes a nice change from more modern in-your-face-nonstop-explosions types of books (not that those don't have their place, too :-)). The story takes place in Roman-occupied Britain and is about young Centurion Marcus traveling to Scotland to reclaim the eagle of his father's lost legion. They're making it into a movie starring Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, due out in February—hopefully they do it justice!!

The Sunbird and The Lion Hunter, by Elizabeth E. Wein—these books are the next installments of Wein's Arthurian/Aksum sequence, continuing on from The Winter Prince and A Coalition of Lions. Really, really lovely books, in an intriguing setting—ancient Ethiopia. These two books (and the last in the sequence, The Empty Kingdom, which I have on hold for myself at the library and I very much hope is waiting for me today!), are more connected than the first two, and follow Telemakos, the son of Medraut (who, at least in The Sunbird, is still working through everything that happened in Winter Prince). Gorgeous writing and wonderful characters, these books are small but incredibly moving.


And that's all for now, folks. Enjoy the rest of your week! Go read some books!!

Revision Woes and Linger

Funny thing about revision. I finally finished the horrendously problematic chapter two (and am pretty happy with the changes!) and promptly ran into an even bigger snag in chapter three. I happened to realize that I'm missing some crucial backstory—not for the novel, really, but for my own personal understanding—and am now finding myself chronicling (read: making up) the entire history of my fictional world from the beginning of time. It's rather exhausting and plenty confusing and has ground revisions to a halt. *sigh*

Today, to be honest, I didn't even open the novel file. I was busy wrestling with the ending of a short story I wrote for a contest (deadline: Friday). I never have trouble with endings. Endings are my specialty. Most of the stories I write excite me because of the endings. But this one just eludes me. I've written three different versions of the ending and none of them feel right. Argh!!!

At any rate, I finally got around to reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which I found fascinating and informative. I am now slightly-less-clueless about military campaigns than I was before, and I know exactly what kind of generals to hire for my next fictional battles! :-)

Also, the lovely Jaclyn Dolamore, author of Magic Under Glass, has compiled a fantastic list of 10 Awesome Books for Fantasy Worldbuilding that I've been drooling over. I actually ordered a used copy of The Courts of Europe from Amazon yesterday and am looking forward to getting into it when it arrives!

Also also, the lovely Maggie Stiefvater, author of the poetically sniffle-inducing (and NYT bestselling) Shiver, is having a contest to promote her gorgeous stop-animation book trailer for the sequel, Linger:

This post is alive with the sound of music!!

In lieu of anything interesting to report (still revising, in chapter two, having difficulties), I thought I'd share a smorgasbord of music I find beautiful and inspiring for your listening pleasure. So here goes!

First up, my favorite singer/songwriter of all time, the lovely Loreena McKennitt, with her adaptation of The Highwayman. I first heard this song over ten years ago and it still gives me goosebumps:


Next up, British indie rock band Keane with Atlantic:


Next up, British rock band Muse with the epic Butterflies and Hurricanes, complete with rad Rachmaninoff piano stylin' in the middle:


Next up, the lovely Vienna Teng with My Medea (which was the main inspiration for that not-really-very-short-story I wrote last fall):


Next up, British indie rock band (are you seeing a pattern here?) Snow Patrol, with the heart-wrenching Make This Go On Forever (with bonus Doctor Who video :-)):


Next up, the banjo-playin' Sufjan Stevens, with Casimir Pulaski Day, one of the saddest/most beautiful songs I've ever heard:


Next up, the champions of esoteric-yet-beautiful lyrics, The Shins, with Pink Bullets:
 

Next up, obsessed-with-gorgeous-but-melodramatic-things The Decemberists, with The Hazards of Love 4, final track of their latest album:


Next up, recent favorite Laura Veirs, with the gorgeously mellow Wrecking:


And finally the weirdly-addictive M. Ward, with Chinese Translation, which has pretty much been going round in my head for the last week or two:


Hope you enjoyed at least a few of those! What are your favorites?