Inspiration Black Hole

Hey guys.

sorry I've been a little bit MIA from the blog again!  Between planning a wedding, keeping my day job, and the start of summer, I haven't had a chance to even come up with an entry topic!

Which is why I'm opening up the lines to you guys now.  Tell me what to write about.  I'll write about ANYthing you say, so be daring. :)

Look forward to your ideas (that I will steal and make my own! jk)

~Amanda

One Paragraph Review of Red Glove

For anyone who follows me on Twitter, you know that I loved this book.  So if you're looking for an unbiased, non-gushy review, just a warning that you won't get that here!  My apologies.

If you don't already know, Red Glove is the sequel to Holly Black's White Cat, the first book of the Curse Workers series.  We continue to follow the main character, Cassel Sharpe as he tries to figure out where he fits between his mob family, best friend/crush (who, incidentally, is the daughter of the mob boss), and prep school.  I'll be honest.  I almost didn't read this book.  I read White Cat on the recommendation of a friend, and it was good, but not jump up and down good.  So I wasn't sure about the sequel.  Let's just say I am glad I picked it up!  Holly manages to weave together so many intricate plot threads to create such a layered and surprising climax that it's impossible to put the book down until you Know What Happens.  And, thought the plot is AMAZING, it's not just that that keeps you reading.  I think the strongest piece of this book was the character development.  While I found the characters slow to reveal themselves in the first book, this book was full of rich, colourful characters that it was so easy to love, hate, worry about, and not want to leave.  I found Holly's depiction of Cassel's mother and her relationship with him phenomenal.  As I mentioned in my previous review, so many books leave the characters and their relationships one-sided, but here we can see Cassel's love for his mother while we also see his embarrassment and mistrust.  He doesn't just hate her or love her, he *feels* for her, authentically.  In short, Red Glove was strong on plot, character development, suspense, and even romance.  Also, I learned a lot about how to con my friends. :)  Definitely worth a read!

Stats:
Front to back time: Two days

Favourite character: Cassel's mum, with his friend Sam as a close runner up.  Sam really came through in this novel, and Cassel's mum, as I said above, is just incredibly realistic.

Musical Accompaniment: My headphones broke! :( so the only thing I read this to was coffee-shop background noise. :)  But if I had to choose, something with a brass section would go great.

Overall Rating: 9/10  I know, I know.  Even better than Ship Breaker.  Yes.  We're just going to have to accept that I have a 3 pt rating system, since it's all either 8, 9, or 10 out of 10. :)  Adjust accordingly!


Now, have you guys read this?  Let me know what you think about this one OR White Cat!  Time to go twiddle my fingers for a year and pull out my hair until the third book is released!

mother mother

Check out this band if you get a chance. They rock!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Confronting High School

"These strange steps take us back, take us back..."
-Yeah Yeah Yeahs

People have been asking me lately why I'm writing so much YA and Middle Grade instead of more adult fiction.  (Especially my mom, who somehow thinks writing YA is easier and that I'm just looking to not work as hard.  Pshaw, I tell her.)

The answer eluded me until recently.  I mean, when I picked up to really start writing a book, I just found it was a teen voice with a teen situation - it wasn't even a conscious decision.  But, last week, I figured out where the real reason lies.  I'm still, in a lot of ways, stuck in high school.

A couple weeks ago, I was at one of my favourite live music venues and a flier for this band caught my eye.  The singer of this band was someone I used to go to school with...over ten years ago.  Now, I went to high school in North Carolina, a far cry from Vancouver, where I am now.  So, of course, I wanted to go!

But then, the day hit.  I woke up before my alarm, having been thrust awake by a nightmare in which I went up to greet the old friend and he was like, "Uh...who are you?"  So, the whole day my anxiety grew about this supposedly exciting encounter.

See, when I was in high school, I was 2 parts weird and 1 part lame.  0 parts cool.  I had a lot of cool friends - one of my best friends was the head cheerleader (blonde, thin, popular), and the other one always managed to hang out with the older alternative crowd that I so longed to break into.  But, I was just a little fringy, in enough that I got invited to some of the parties, but annoying enough that no one wanted to hang out with me once I was there.  This sounds like self deprecation, but really it's not.  Okay, it is.  A bit. :)  See!  I told you I was still in high school!  Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I was SO desperate to be accepted that I tried my best to act like everyone else, and for awhile I lost myself.  (My REAL self, who is 3 parts cool and 0 parts weird and lame, by the way.  Well, maybe 2.5 parts cool and .5 parts weird!)

Anyway, the point is, I was never really Friends-with-a-capital-F with this lead singer guy.  I just kind of knew him...and he may have dated 3 or 4 of my friends over the course of 5 years.  So, as the night drew near, the panic grew.

And then, we went (myself--the real one--and my fiance) to the show.  I approached lead-singer-guy, who TOTALLY remembered who I was and seemed to think it was pretty neat that I was there, and I introduced the fiance.  He introduced his wife.  All things told, it was quite the success.  We've both come a long way from high school, and I realized some insecurities are worth letting go of.  Not to mention that there are different angles to every picture.  Lead-singer-boy didn't seem to remember me as a 2 parts weird 1 part lame, annoying girl at all.  (I mean, I didn't ask, but I think I'd have picked up on that, no? :) )

Another thing I learned, and that I keep on learning all the time, is that NO one feels completely comfortable in their skin in high school and NO one is immune to self consciousness in those teenage years.  What got me through was the fact that I could always disappear into a book, and the characters always knew exactly how I felt...even when it seemed like no one else in the real world did.

So, I write YA because I know that feeling of outsider-ness and through the eventual successes of my originally flawed, lost, and struggling characters, I want to show teens that there's a light at the end of the tunnel.  ...and sometimes I need a little reminder too. :)

So, tell me, dear readers, am I totally off?  Were you completely confident and popular in high school without a care in the world? :)

David the Movie Snob takes on HANNA (slight spoilers)

Last Thursday, David and I went to see the new film, Hanna.  It's no secret that I have no qualms about watching murderous preteens; in fact I kind of dig that stuff.  So, as you might expect, I was very excited to see this movie.

Joe Wright's camera work and Saoirse Ronan's performance were no disappointment.  The visuals are absolutely incredible, from the opening scene where Hanna takes down a reindeer (I think?) to the ending in an overgrown, whimsical children's theme park.  The initial scenes, aided by Ronan's amazing acting, provide what is needed to get the audience on the side of the underage killer--even after watching her commit brutal acts of (possibly unnecessary?) violence.

However--and it pains me to find myself nearly as snobby as the movie snob himself--the film begins to lose steam about halfway through.  The plot becomes relatively predictable, with the only questions being how exactly it plays out.  Meaning, who lives and who dies.  But all the how's and why's are pretty well inferred.

Another issue, as the Snob himself pointed out, is that there are a few...let's say "ability" inconsistencies. Early action scenes are very Bourne-esque, with Hanna and her father taking down 2-8 armed and trained federal agents with minimal difficulty.  However, when Hanna and her father's nemesis enlists the help of a German fetishist and his two scrawny skinhead goons, well, that's when the super-teen and her dad meet their match.  While 8 agents don't pose a threat, man it's really hard and stressful to take down these German brawlers on motorbikes.

So, in sum, it was an amazing and visually exciting movie to watch, and I'd still recommend it to anyone who digs that sort of thing.  I mean, I'd probably even watch it again.  But, there are plot issues, and I can tell you David the Movie Snob will not be taking in a second viewing.

The breakdown:

DMS rating: 4/10, to which I responded, "REALLY!?"  Jeez, it wasn't that bad!

my rating: 7/10  Seriously, give it a watch! :)

Anyone else seen this flick?  What did you think?

Silver - just some writing

My mind has been brimming with little stories, character sketches, and other things lately.  It's like the start of summer sent a creative surge through my brain.  Which is awesome, but I'm trying to focus on my current WIP right now, and all these great ideas can be VERY distracting.  So I had an idea.  Just as listening to that song in your head makes it quiet down (at least for a little while), I thought if I did a bit of writing on just one of these ideas, maybe they'd all shut up for awhile and I can focus on my space opera. :)

As I was falling asleep last night, some lines were flickering in my head - less story than character sketch, but I thought I'd put them down.  And, since I'm trying to write more in the blog, I figured why not put them down for all to see? :)

~~~

Silver -

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't know about death.  No one had to teach me; it was just something that wove itself through my childhood like the silver thread woven through the quilt my dead grandma made me.

I was born exactly one year after the death of my uncle, the one I never met.  In some ways, I knew him, Paul, better than I knew my living aunts and uncles.  His photograph stared at me from every room in the house we shared with my grandparents.  His name lingered always just behind the last word of every conversation, as if the walls themselves whispered it.  I still remember the way the air around us would turn thick like syrup if anyone slipped up and actually did mention his name out loud.  If someone said it, "Paul," time stopped for a few seconds, freezing us in that moment until we could push it away again and go on with life.

There is a lot of responsibility being the first born after a death.  Though no one said it, even before kindergarten I knew that I was more than just the first grandchild.  The more religious of the family believed I was sent to them.  The spiritual thought I was Paul reincarnated.  And even to those whose views were less articulated, I was the Silver Lining, the light shining behind the dark cloud of death.

If anything, I was a constant reminder of him.  I learned to tell the difference between someone looking at me, the new baby born into this family, versus someone looking at his memory.  When they looked through me, a sad smile on their lips and softly glazed eyes, I knew they weren't seeing me at all.  But that was alright; at least they had a smile, even if sad.  At least I made them smile at all.

~~~

And that's all we have today, folks. :)  Thanks for reading!

AMC

One Paragraph Review of Ship Breaker

I picked this book up at the SCBWI Western Washington conference this past weekend...and then I didn't put it down again until I finished it. :)

Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker takes place in a future where the oil has run out and the wealth distribution is even more uneven than it is now.  On a beach off the Gulf of Mexico, we follow the protagonist, Nailer, as he risks his life scavenging old wrecked oil tankers for enough copper wire to maybe buy his next meal - that is if his addict father doesn't take most of it first.  When Nailer finds the scavenge of all scavenges, a huge wealthy clipper ship left behind by a recent hurricane, he must decide whether to save the clipper's lone survivor and possibly escape his life of poverty, or to remain loyal to his crew and family and strip the ship for all it's worth.  Bacigalupi's frank language and amazing sense of setting combine to keep the pace up while making you feel you're right alongside Nailer in his adventures.  The characters of this book leapt off the page for me, so much so that when I finished, I felt I'd lost friends.  Perhaps it's because I'm so used to trilogies these days, but I haven't felt like that at the end of a book in ages.  And it's not just Nailer, either; the supporting characters are even more well-rounded and lifelike.  I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes good adventure, an exciting plot, and strong characters.

Stats:
Front to back time: Two days

Favourite character: This was tough.  I think the most interesting character in the book was Nailer's father, but I wouldn't want to meet him!  As for one I'd like to meet, I thought Sadna was wonderful.


Most exciting scene: I had to add this new category just for the amazing nautical battle scene.  I won't give anything away; I'll just say one word gripping.

Musical Accompaniment: Metronomy, Massive Attack

Overall Rating: 8/10  ...I'm beginning to think my rating system is flawed.  I'm always rating them 8!  But maybe that's because I only read good books! ;)


Have any of you guys read this book?  Let me know your thoughts!