Another Update--My Life is Full of Them

Hello, internet. My laptop is not fixed yet, nor do I think it ever will be. I write from my mom's iMac desktop. It's getting late and I'm trying to wind down before I go to sleep, so I figured I might as well write a blog post, so you can learn what has been happening in my life recently.

First and foremost, I got a boyfriend.

*falls out of chair in surprise*

*gets back in chair and falls out again*

I know, dear reader. I was shocked too.

I met him last November at a 4-H camp. This is the post where I release it into the public, so I'll say that  he is very nice and I wish for all the world he lived in the same town I do.

But, alas, we live two hours away... much to the relief of both of our moms I'm sure.

I liked him enough that I gave him the link to my blog, so he's probably going to read this post. Probably. A message:

Hi Michael! I like your face! - Hannah

..

Second, I got rejected by two literary magazines. I told you a few posts ago about Lightning Cake, the tiny zine that publishes flash fiction... I did not tell you about The Luna Station Quarterly, which caters to women sci-fi writers. I submitted a piece that I wrote back in October (on my birthday, to be exact).

They wrote me a really nice letter back critiquing the little pieces in the story that made them ultimately reject it, and I think I'll print it out and frame it.

Lightning Cake was also really nice about it all. Though my story (about a girl with a love impediment) fit the requirements and was well within the word count limit, they wrote back telling me that my story had too much bulk to it to be successful in their magazine. This was the first rejection I got, so I was pretty down in the dumps for a while. Then, after I'd consumed some ice cream (yeah, sorry, mom) I went back to my computer and reread the piece, and of course I agreed with everything they said.

Currently I am writing this piece about a girl named Amelia who is spending her final summer in her little hometown before she "runs away" to college. She works in an orchard and dates a boy who's afraid of animals, and the whole thing is so absurd and silly, but it's so much fun to write.

I don't know how long it will get, but as-of-now it is on its way to being a good-length novel. How many scenes I want to write yet! It's so much fun, and this summer I am putting it first and foremost on my long list of things to finish. Maybe I'll get it done by August if I just saddle down and do it.

It's a goal.

The Band

I'm currently writing this blog post in the car on the drive back to my family's house, suckling off of my sister's wifi connection like a day-old pig, praying tat it doesn't give out in the time it takes to write this post. 

The other night my sister and I were out late milking goats (I know, not the bad-girl stuff you expected me to be doing late at night. I'm lame like that), joking about this one time we wanted to perform in a band. 

It would be great, the best sister duo there ever was. I think I was about eight or so, and she was nine, so it wasn't as though we were all that musically talented. I had this little kid guitar that I was too busy to learn how to play, but thought I was pretty good at, and Hope had her voice. We wrote our first song on Christmas Eve, and practiced it in the living room most of the afternoon. 

The song was called Milk & Cookies for Santa, and though the sheet of paper that the original lyrics is on is long gone (who knows, maybe I'll find it some day), it went something like this:

Milk and Cookies for Santa

Oh, we're layin' out milk and cookies for Santaaaaa

You should too,

We're gonna get presennntttsss in the morrrninnnngggg

MILK AND COOKIES FOR SANTA, YEAH!

We were lyrical geniuses. 

Last year I read the blog that my mom used to keep and I discovered, among other things, that she had heard us performing our timeless song and deemed it important enough to blog about. To this day, it is one of my most embarrassing memories, aside from the time I climbed into another person' excursion at the post office while they were in the car.

... Anyway.

Hope and I sat around for forever one afternoon in the summertime trying to come up with a good band name. Sweat poured off of our foreheads as we tanned in the grass, giggling like maniacs as we tried to come up with a name to title ourselves. 

I asked Hope about it, and she said we never settled on anything, but that one of our top choices was The Purple Dolphins.

There's probably a reason why our band didn't kickstart, but I'm just not sure where we went wrong.

 

 I read this book a while ago called The Disenchantments, which is about the world's worst girl band going on a road trip. These girls suck--but what got me was that no one cares after a while, because they're hot and are really into the music they make. 

What got me the most about the book was that it brought up memories of being a brief member of The Purple Dolphins. It reminded me so much of how much fun I had strumming an out-of-tune guitar and singing a few songs which lyrics needed working on. 

The book also made me want to start a band. Not to get famous or anything--I know just how impossible that is. Just to have a good time. Though I know I probably never will start another, band, perhaps I'll look more fondly at the days I was a musician.

Cool Things

One perk of spending a lot of time on the internet is that I find a ton of cool stuff that I want to get. I figured it would be a good idea to compile some of these into a nice post.

1. Globe Necklace

2. Snow Globe Ring

3. Skeleton Keys

4. Cat Scarf

5. Cute Measuring Cups

6. Whale Ring

7. Galaxy Shirt

 Of course, if I bought all this stuff, I would be broke--more than broke. It's incredible how much some of these things cost. For example, the galaxy sweater is $64, and the globe necklace is $20. I couldn't find the prices for everything else (also, skeleton keys don't exactly have a price. They just look nice).

What stuff have you found that you would like to buy?

Fathomless: A Book Review.

*SPOILERS ABOUND. MUST I CONTINUE TO TELL YOU TO PROCEED IN CAUTION, IF AT ALL?*

Way yonder, back in July, you may remember that I wrote a book review on Jackson Pearce's Sweetly. Recently, another book in the series came out, and so I decided to read it because though I did complain and whine unnecessarily on the Sweetly review, I actually did like it.

Fathomless is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, by Hans Christian Anderson. I could catch very subtle hints that this was a retelling (like in the fact that when the mermaid, Lo, walked on land she'd cut her feet on imaginary knives and she'd start bleeding--and in the old fairy tale it was like there were knives in the little mermaid's feet when she walked), and I thought that it was very well done.

I couldn't put this book down. It was compelling, and the plot moved fast, and the pacing was SO much better than with Sweetly. There were a few imagery problems, like she had trouble just honestly telling us that Lo had feet, and not a tail. And so I spent the first 10,000 words or so thinking, "That's great but how did she get up on land like that with a tail?"

As I was expecting, this book is very... strange, for lack of a better word. The mermaid-type creatures blend well enough with the fenris (the werewolves, if you will). It didn't bother me, since I'm naturally strange. 

... AND THEN we get to the part about the shells, which did not fit in at all in Sweetly. But then they did, because they made sense suddenly.

The romance was PHENOMENALLY improved. It was almost refreshing. I was caught between which girl the dude was going to choose, because I couldn't decide which one he liked more. I thought that he acted a little sleezy, though he was cute. I like the name Barnaby, by the way (this sentence will make more sense when you read the book. If you do).

I definitely recommend this book to anyone who's looking for a good story. But first you must read both Sisters Red and Sweetly, as this is a series book and half of the components won't make sense unless you read in order. 

Romance: 3.5 stars

Creepy Aspects: 5.0 stars

Plot Hole Explanations From Sweetly: 5.0 stars

 Overall: 4.5 stars

Well done, Jackson! You're up a star. Let's hope your retelling of The Snow Queen is stunning. I'm looking forward to it!

New Writing Projects (ish).

*WARNING: The following content is full of insufferable whining and jerky behavior. I tried to put all the worst parts in the footnotes, but I failed. BE WARNED AND PROCEED WITH CAUTION*

So back in April I wrote a post on this blog about all of the stories that I was currently working on. Only one of those books is currently still on my work list, and so I thought I'd update it a bit, just so you're in the loop. Because I love all of you guys.

But before I begin, I'll just start right off and say that I didn't crop the photos like in the last post, because I post these stories on Figment and I can just crop them there, without the photos becoming pixelated and grainy--if that makes any sense.

The quotes underneath the covers are from the synopses-es found on my Figment page.

1. The Glass Girl

The font used are Bell MT and Sunshine in my Soul.

The world has turned to glass. Everything is smooth, colors pinks and whites and lavenders. Lea collects small people, making terrariums for them back at her house.

This is my Camp NaNo project, and it's the story of a girl (and also a boy) who live in the world after it's all turned to glass. It's set in Topeka, Kansas (with a smattering of Colorado Springs), because I've been to both places and so the setting is natural to me.*

In this novel there are skeletons and magic and tea and the color orange, automatons, miniature people, and also a fair amount of reading. 

I think this book has a lot of potential--more potential, than, say, that awful book I wrote last year that was a dystopian. **

I also think this book is odd, to say the least. It's definitely different (as in, the plain girl does not fall in love with any hot, perfect guys), and so I'm wondering if it will ever be published. I'm not willing to make it any more boring than it already is--it's set in Kansas, land of the flat and dry--and so maybe I'll have to self publish it or something. But I'd rather not do that, and so I'm leaning on the traditional way.

Either way, I want to see this baby in print. Hardcover form, please.

2. Mermaidens

The font used is Bell MT.

Living in the seaside town of Klarine, there is a girl named Charlotte, and she holds a deep secret: she is a mermaid.

Yes, I was working on this book in the last post I made about my current works in progress, except for the fact that the plot has changed so dramatically from the last draft you couldn't recognize the similarities in it (also, the cover changed. Here's a gold star for noticing!). I will now list quite a few things that went wrong while writing the first 8K words of the first draft.

• The twin sisters were hard to write, even though they've sort of remained in the current draft. But they did seem to hate each other before I scrapped them up. Plus, they were so different from each other. One was shy and cried a lot (my main character) and the other was outgoing, snarky, and downright rude. 
• On the topic of my main character, I'd like to add that she wasn't strong enough to carry the story on her shoulders. She was far too fragile, and in about the fifth chapter, I broke her (there will  now be a future blog post on how you can break your characters). Her name was Leila, if that gives you a hint as to her character.
• Too much happened in too little time. 
• The pacing was terrible. 

And now, a list of things that stayed the same throughout:

• Calvin's name--and, for the most part, his character. Only, he's considered insane by everyone... except he actually isn't.
• Minos, the big black draft horse. 
• Water. There's definitely water, somewhere. 

 

3. The Sheep Watch

The font used is Garamond.

Leonard watches for wolves one night while tending to his sheep. But when he hears a noise in the apple orchard, he follows it and meets the incredible Penny Keaton.

The Sheep Watch is a contest entry for the Defy the Dark contest, and it's about a boy named Leonard who falls asleep while watching his flock of sheep one night, and when he wakes up he meets this girl named Penny, who is intentionally a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (a pretty, young, perfect girl who is put into the story to alter the course of a man's life. See: Margo in Paper Towns and Clarisse in Fahrenheit 451).

It's probably one of the lighter things I've written; the death count tolls in at only one victim! A huge success!***

Plus, it's finished. So I'm not exactly working on it anymore. I figured I'd just announce that it exists or something. 

Footnotes:

* Mom, you may remember that I paid an awful lot of time trying to spot the top of the Capitol building while passing through Topeka on our way to the book signing. I consider this "novel research." I've noticed that there are a lot of trees in that city, though--trees that I sort of forgot about while writing the first 30K words. REVISION TIME.

** And speaking of dystopian... this new book is not one of those. Not. Yes, it is, for the most part a post-apocalyptic novel. But it does not take place in the future, and there aren't any guns or knives or swords in it--and there is also no instance where an incredibly hot boy falls in love with an average, plain girl *cough cough Divergent and Delirium cough cough*.

*** Of course, this sentence has led to a ten-minute long math problem while I deduce how many characters I kill per story, on average. The grand total: 5.3. I had to guesstimate for my novels that I haven't finished yet, but I believe the number is pretty accurate.

The Lawrence Book Signing.

I don't think I've mentioned I was going to do this on the blog yet, but I attended a book signing a few days ago in Lawrence. It was for The Merry Sisters of Fate--aka, Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff. They were releasing a new book called The Curiosities, and it is basically an anthology of short stories. You can check out their work here. 

My mom graciously agreed to drive me six hours to the event, for which I'm very grateful. At the signing there were quite a few girls there, and a few sort of like me--namely, they want to be published authors.

During the question portion of the event I got to ask them a couple of questions (and one of which was on my mind since I finished The Scorpio Races last November), which was awesome. What I liked most about it--aside from the fact that they defaced one of Jackson Pearce's books for me--was the fact that they were normal, and appearance-wise they looked just like authors should look, in my opinion: two or three years behind on fashion trends and odd looking. 

Well, alright, two of them fit that category. Maggie was pretty cool. 

But they were talking about stuff I'd only discussed with some of my internet friends! There were NaNoWriMo people there in the audience and it was awesome. We talked about Writers' Block and query letters and character building and settings and plot and everything. My head's still reeling from it. 

This is me looking sufficiently awkward with her.

I was shaking while in line  for the signing part. I mean, they were real authors. Two of them had made the NYT Bestsellers list. One of them had written some of my favorite books. And I met them.

Definitely worth a six hour drive.

Bits and Pieces: August.

Picture/ Photo Find:

Something I Did:

I actually haven't done anything noteworthy recently. I've been writing a lot (obviously) and I've been 'hanging out' with a friend. Today I went to the next city over from my small town with her and we bought chicken feed.

While there we went to IHOP, where I ate the worst meal of my life. Seriously. If you're ever there, *do not* order the Garden Crepes. You will sincerely regret it. 

I also started reading Fahrenheit 451. It's good so far... but I sort of lost it (or someone stole it. Hmm). One minute it was sitting next to my bed in a stack of other books, and the next it was mysteriously missing. Maybe my brother is reading it. 

A Writer Thing:

I've discovered just how hard it is to move your story forward when all there is to work off of is a few miniature people, some cans of green beans, and a glass world. Also a fully-stocked library, but it would sort of feel like cheating describing each and every novel that passes through one of my character's hands.

Also, I believe I'm actually teaching history, geography, and science lessons in my story. I'm not sure, though. I like to throw in fun facts, but then the fun facts build into something entirely different.

Song I Love:

I'm going to end this post right now because I have to go write 1.6K words. Also, I'm sorry I'm neglecting you. I promise to write at least three more posts this month, if not more.

What I do on Thursdays.

This morning--like any morning--I was on my Twitter account. I get all of my news from Twitter, just FYI, so when my feed was full of tweets like this, I had to find out more.

 

I went to her official website and was surprised to find out that the people on Twitter were correct (they kill off countless people every day. Last week they killed Demi Moore--and she's not dead).

What I'm doing to respond to this:

Playing my violin.

All day.

On a Thursday.