And I have been so right on in trying to do this
I think I understand Bound by Blood better now that I'm doing this. Tying Adrian and Ari together from the very beginning may even give cause as to why it took so long to investigate Ari: not only did Jonathan say nothing out of fear, shame, and regret, Adrian would have had similar feelings if he'd planted those seeds in her head. And if he'd held onto the letter, which he easily could, he wouldn't be able to forget that it was her who asked him those questions so many years ago.
Plus, I'm seeing Ari as very human now. I have this whole thing mapped out for her descent. This whole thing to make it obvious that she's slightly mentally unwell from the get go, but still a happy girl with many passionate ideas. It's to give her actions a very wholesome meaning: she's fighting for a cause, right? (For the record, I hate activists... I don't care what you're fighting for, activists are dangerous people... having ideals that you will do anything to achieve is not healthy... even if they are good ideals. Practicing your ideals on your own time is fine... doing anything to get the rest of the world on your side is sick and must be stopped, regardless of what you fight for... but I can understand WANTING to fight for something... especially in the situation she's in)
But looking at Ari as a teenage girl with a crush on one of the most powerful guys in her entire country puts things in a different light. Ari's love for Adrian is kind of like the millions of "misunderstood" teenage girls who want to bang Edward Cullen. Because wanting something you can't have is often an easy outlet for trying to control emotions you don't understand, but it very easily leads to obsession in people like that, and that's where the danger comes in. And that's what makes Ari so realistic.
Of course, we can't have Ari being TOO realistic. This is fantasy. Very few people in the real world are so filled with bitter resentment that they need to raise an army to destroy an entire nation simply because their own life was ruined (note, very few people. Not NO people. Because obviously, we had Hitler...). Very few people are willing to try and create an entire religion and persuade people to believe in and worship something based on lies (again, very few people. But, there are exceptions. Jim Jones, anyone? What's his face who leads the End of the World cult? The entire God Hates Fags church? FLDS?).
But she has realistic emotions. She IS the misunderstood teen with an obsessive crush. She WILL experience genuine tragedy that drives her off the deep end. Emotionally, she is real. Just like the over the top Lairene, and the slightly underwhelming Kait. And putting Ari in that light is changing how I view my whole story world. IT'S PERFECT!
I would like to point out, for irony's sake, that the inhumans are very much like the Aryan race Hitler wanted to reign the world... however, history tells us Hilter wanted to kill people who came from the same background as him, whereas Ari, who has a very Hitler mindset nonetheless, wants to DESTROY the people who fit this image precisely because they are not like her, and so she feels jipped.
Ah, when storytelling and history collide.
Last post I made, I mentioned something that interested me. And the whole "Lara sequel" is a go, but not coming to me just yet. It's kinda like The Red Book... I knew where I wanted to go with it, but I had to go backwards and write Bound by Blood three times first... but anyway, I'd mentioned writing one about Ari... and then I realize... well why the hell not?
I really, REALLY thought about it: without Ari, none of the rest of it would be. Sure, she's a character with limited "on screen appearance", so to speak, and who gets about three conversations in the whole book, but she is more important to the plot in some ways than is Lairene. Ari made it all happen.
Ok, we'll be fair. The blame for what happens to Lairene stems from two places: the rebellion in Deltenra that led to the Ansamari curse, and Ari's wicked plot (and hey, a jump back in time to the rebellion would make for a great plot as well). Ari is the mastermind. Ari USED the curse to create a life. She couldn't have known David would live up to his name by trying to repeat his father's crime, but she knew that she needed a child as weak and scorned by inhumans as she was. And none could do that but the incestous love child of purely Ansamari cursed blood. She knew, she created it, and every situation Lara found herself in went back to that. Again: she is not Ari's bioligical child, but she is Ari's creation.
I wanted to give Jonathan a stronger role in the Lara sequel idea, and that can be blamed on Ari as well: in telling his side of the story, all the blame on him goes back to being duped by Ari. Again, the family curse made it workable, but Ari was the one to directly act on any weakness that it caused.
And let's jump forward to Kait: her entire life and the way she lives it is because of Ari... did the Villagers have strange beliefs before Ari? Were they easily manipulated because of their desire for a higher power and some sort of religion to follow on a religion-less continent? Yes... but it was Ari who took their wishes and made it a reality, Ari who encouraged their rules, Ari who turned their desire for faith to Lairene, Ari who gave them the guidance they wanted and then taught them to fight for her (ok, is it just me, or is Ari starting to sound a lot like Hitler? Whoops...), so in essence Ari who gave Lara the power to punish them as she did, and Ari's actions that tore the Village between its need to worship Lara and its outright anger at the rules they felt they had to follow because of her. Kait may not be a descendant of Lara, but the entire life she lives was also manipulated by Ari. The Village is what it is because of false promises and hope that Ari gave them. And besides, Brandon IS a direcent descendant of Lara, and so his existence would not be were it not for the original manipulation of Ari over Jonathan. Liana is from Grideth, fostered in the C'Reyal palace because the tradition was continued to prove there was no blame on Grideth for David's actions. Tied in to the Ansamari curse, yes, but also, were it not for Jonathan's crime, David would not have... repeated his father's crime. He would've had no sister. There would've been no repition of what happened to the last David Ansamari. He would have had no reason to believe Lara wasn't his sister.
It scares me to look at this and see that everything is Ari. All I had wanted was a villain in a minor role. I had not created her with the intent to give her this much power. It wasn't until I finished writing that I realized Ari had practically taken the story out of my hands and rewritten all her acts of villainy for me.
And so, Ari gets her own story now. In order for her to have that much bearing in what goes on in Ambaire, she needs a chance to shine, to tell her story, to be a main character for a moment rather than the behind the scenes bad guy. Because she wasn't born evil.
I have ideas galore: I even figured out why it is that despite her general hatred of inhumans, she regards James as the destroyer of all she holds dear (even though he's not the inhuman who killed her parents, she always seems to hate him more than anyone else throughout Lara's memories) and doesn't actually hate Adrian: if she had admired him from afar, but, being too poor to get close to the then prince, she can't say he hurt her directly, but rather blame James's mother for stealing her love and creating the devil spawn with him.
I'm excited for her to turn to Jonathan, to pick him, the wounded inhuman, from all her other customers as a prostitute, and decide he is the one she relies on enough to manipulate him.
I'm thrilled to be able to finally see her tragedy turn her from a good if slightly naive girl who loves her family into a sick, twisted person who can't realize what she's doing is wrong. Perhaps she was always a bit "simple", a bit withdrawn, a bit mentally ill, but always in a loving enough family for it not to matter. I want to use her one sided love for Adrian to show that... she creates it in her mind, and she blames someone else for ruining it, but it's not until tragedy strikes that her imagination turns to disastrous.
It's brilliant. Ari is complex. Ari is almost more complex than Lara. She is a character unlike any I've written before. It thrills me to know I'll be writing a story that doesn't end with a happily ever after, a character who dies alone rather than in love, a villain's story told in a positive light. I am going into new realms of storytelling, and for some reason all this can make me think of is wanting to read Obernewtyn from Ariel's perspective.
I may know how I want to finalize Bound By Blood
And I may have a solid grasp on The Red Book
But the truth is...
Lairene is not done yet. There is so much more of her story that NEEDS telling. Things relevant to where I am right now in life. I'm not sure what the plot is yet, but I know how it begins. I'm not sure what the title is yet, but I know this is about Lairene, not some girl in the future who learns how to be herself because of Lairene's writings.
This is a story I am very much in need of writing. I never understood people who said they were so attached to their worlds they had to keep coming up with new stories. For me, I just had to keep rewriting Bound By Blood... but now... I get it. I want new stories in this world, I want to better understand what happened in between.
Hell, with the amount of time I've spent thinking, not worldbuilding, but THINKING... I could write so many books in this world...
I could write one all about Ari and her descent from innocent child to destroyed villainess. I could write one all about Jian turning her back on the Ansamari family and finding her own way to be free of the course. I could easily write one about the very people who formed the plot to steal Lairene's book. I could write one about the life of Liana and her dreams. Hell, I've been tempted to write alternate timeline fanfiction to my own story so Daniel and Isabel can hook up (is it bad that two characters I really want to be together don't exist in the same generation?). Hell, Sahelia's story is fascinating enough for a book.
These people are, to me, so fucking REAL, that each one of them could thrive within a very independent story and still have it all tie together. I look at these characters I've invented, and I see backgrounds... harsh, unsettling backgrounds, easy, pampered lives... so much. Everyone is where they are for a reason, and that makes me both proud and overwhelmed. Ah, the life of being a writer
I'm having issues with the title... honestly, it's been called Bound by Blood for AGES, but that's because when the original concept popped up, James actually WAS using the bond to control Lara, and so it was the basis for the plot. The Red Book is obvious, because it's entirely about the quest for Lara's book, and what searching for the book ends up meaning to all the different characters based on who they are. But Bound by Blood is SO much more complex, and while the bond is really important t the relationship between James and Lara, it's not so much important to the plot as a whole... that's why I'm struggling.
So far, my argument for keeping it as the title is the fact that it's through the bond that Lara is able to learn to trust James and see he's actually on her side, and it's the two of them together who are able to defeat Ari and move past the destruction. But on the other hand, there's so freaking much politics, human condition issues, betrayal, and quests that deviate the plot from the relationship that I can't fully convince myself that is THE key aspect to the story.
Gah. It's amazing how a story THIS complicated can be followed by a story as simple as The Red Book. But that's part of the problem... I understood The Red Book from the beginning, because I dreamed the ENTIRE plot... all I needed to do was pad out the plot, and it was there... doing it for my NaNo novel was a piece of cake, because my own mind had made it clear enough to pump out 50,000 words in 2 weeks, nok problem. It's so simple... Kait is trying to discover her own identity without the Village defining who she is, Brandon is trying to prove he is more than his royal title makes him, Liana is filled with curiosity about the world and the things that define each culture, and Isabel never really connected to her mother's culture as well as she did her father's culture... Anthony Mardred simply lives with the purpose of defending that which his family stood for. It all binds together quite easily, because each character is somehow tied to the message Lara left behind.
But the problem is how complex Bound by Blood becamecame in being the history of a philosophy... after all, the plot was revived with intent to be a prequel to The Red Book... I was having issues getting the words out, so I deviated to write the history. And in order to lend itself to what Lairene needed to write, human condition and thought process took over so much of the story that it lost one significant symbol that states what it is. I'm trying to think of other books that vast, and I think of things like... Obernewtyn... but I have no significant place that defines where the story takes root. Lara's all over the place. I can't think of an abstract word to call it. I can't call it "Lairene Ansamari" because that just sounds silly unless it's a book taking place in the real world (ever noticed that? All books where the title is the main characters name seem to be young adult fantasy taking place in more or less the real world, or with roots in the real world... Harry Potter, Alyzon Whitestarr, Percy Jackson... see what I mean?)
Anywho, title aside, I'm feeling terribly confident about many aspects of my current draft. The prologue is ready, and chapter 1 needs tweaking so it's the only COMPLETE change in the new draft, but the following chapters are coming along quite nicely and actually introducing the story as it was intended. Bravo to me!
To figure out what makes Isobelle Carmody such a great writer...
So, right now, I'm re-reading Obernewtyn
Of course, like any author whose writing an epic series and publishing her books over a vast period of time, there will be slight changes. The thing with her, however, is it's not MUCH. Most of it is things like accidental switching of a term used, particularly by Maruman. (Like, I'll need to re read it, but I don't recall Maruman saying "oldOne" anytime past Farseekers or Ashling...)
Sometimes, she's a tad too abrupt when it comes to character descriptions (i.e, Elspeth deciding she has no clue what's up with someone so just randomly shoving a probe into their brain and discovering it's a charred wreckage...), but when it comes down to it, she introduces characters in logical ways (instead of just "and they happened to be passing by on the street and became bestest friends forever) and you feel like they're there at the time and place they are for a reason.
I also renewed Alyzon Whitestarr so I can scan that for clues to the great one's method as well...
Most of all, what I see is that her characters make sense. I think a lot of the reason for some of the abruptness is one of the issues I run into with Bound by Blood as well... sometimes, when you're writing first person, there's simply no way to ease it and still sound like a human being with a thought process... you don't go through long tangled author-esque descriptions when you're thinking about your first impression of another person...
But when it comes to the characters, even the absurd ones make sense. Let's take the Whitestarr family, for instance... sure, they're a bit eccentric (and by a bit I mean... who the fuck acts like that?)... but they also reflect what the story is trying to point out... good and evil aren't necessarily the nature of humanity, but some people are naturally weak and others are naturally strong... and very rarely do the naturally strong let themselves succumb to doing evil things. So, you have the dad... who's a good natured guy, and clearly pretty hard to break down... he has strength, enough to look after his family, take care of himself, etc. It would take a LOT to break him down and start to think there was nothing left for him. It would take something unthinkable to weaken his nature. But there's the mom, who is flighty at best, and not really attentive to her children... further examination reveals her to be someone who is weak, but is aware enough of this to keep fighting, and the only way she knows how is to shut out the world so she can't let the horrible things target her anymore. Know anyone like that? I sure do!
You've got Jesse, who know one really knows why he's shut off, but it turns out he just couldn't figure out how to best express himself. You've got Mirandah, who is essentially the strong one among the siblings, but rather than just being confident in herself, seems to channel that strength through wildly expressing herself. She probably could be broken down if anyone tried, but she's not weak enough or strong enough that anyone sees a reason to try.
Then there's Serenity, who is the weakest of them all, and like so many people who try to steadfastly take up causes and blindly fight them, attacking people who don't support what they believe, she thinks she is the only one who understands the pain this situation caused her. She is easily susceptible, and she's not evil, but by being so weak, evil can influence her more greatly than someone with willpower.
Alyzon being the main character, she, of course, has to be that nice little balance... she's strong, but she has fears... things get to her... she is "the ordinary one", but moreover, she's simply herself. What protects her isn't so much her strength, but her awareness. She has that ability to not let the world get her down or pull her into the grand scheme because she understands why it happens to people. These are all real, logical people, whose actions can be understoond simply by their own resolve and their own experiences...
Same thing when you look at Obernewtyn... how was Rushton so easily torn apart emotionally by the drugs? Because he could be... because since book 1, he revealed just how much it tore him apart to not have what everyone else has. Since book 3, it's been clear as day how much insecurity he has about whether or not Elspeth can love him. Sure, he acts strong on the outside, but that's because he has to. It's those little things he admits that make us realize he's not an asshole (c'mon, seriously, didn't anyone else wanna kick Rushton a swift kick to the balls while reading the first book?), he's just lacking in self confidence but needs to prove himself nonetheless. Know anyone like that? Of course you do.
That's the point with Isobelle Carmody... you get sucked in because her characters make sense. You see in them qualities based on the fantasy worlds she creates, but those qualities can be translated into regular old human emotion that needs no special powers to be that way. And she uses interesting scenarios about the real world to make us understand these things. Evil being a virus that preys on the weak? A nuclear holocaust that sends the remains of humanity flying back into the farming age?
These are not only riveting plots, but the fact that they incorporate the real world, and real seeming people makes us able to stop and really look at what is going on and how it affects the way people act.
Isobelle Carmody, you are a genius...
In recovering from whooping cough, my health has been horrid. I've had weight fluxuation that makes it impossible to know which size pants to buy... I keep losing and gaining mass amounts of weight, and I'd like it to all settle out
Thing is, making goals keeps me motivated
And, I'm a writer. So writing keeps me interested
What can I do?
Here's the deal:
I need to lose 20 pounds (preferrably), and enough stomach flab that my waist size matches my hip size (I have bigger hips than I do waist, but my hip measurements fit 1 to 2 pant sizes smaller than my waist measurements... wtf? Anywho, I need to be able to wear size 5 jeans... I've worn size 5 jeans since FOREVER because my hips have always been that size, even when my waist was so tiny I needed a belt with 5s... and even now, jeans that fit my waist do not agree with my hips... sooo... down with ill fitting pants!)
I also need a regular workout program that ensures that once I lose it, it STAYS there (like it did until I became a lazy bum)
I've also had some recent health concerns that may be related to yet ANOTHER undetermined food allergy to something I'm in love with eating (first you deny me my macaroons, now I can't have zuchinni and mushroom stir fry? WHAT IS THIS WORLD COMING TO? I WAN
My current ideas are:
A poem a day until I lose the necessary weight (to be posted here, of course)
Coming up with a story that I'll stop tampering with once I reach my weight loss goal... but that sounds tricky if I want to continue the story
I think we'll go with poem a day...
Yeah, I like this... starting tomorrow, and skipping Saturday 'cause I won't be home...
I am, again, so blown away by what she does. While, some writers are stuck in ruts they can't get out of, Alyzon Whitestarr is NOT Obernewtyn... Alyzon and Elspeth are not the same character, Harrison and Rushton have nothing in common (much as I am rooting for Elspeth and Rushton and dub them one of my favorite fictional couples, Harrison is about five million times less annoying than Rushton... possibly because he doesn't act like a complete cock, get wounded over not being "special", and allow himself to savagely attack his girlfriend like a wild animal and break a bone or two in the process... just saying... oh Rushton, how we fan-geeks adore you and your hotheaded ridiculousness and easily manipulated self loathing ways...)... although I guess I could compare Ariel and Aaron... similar names, shared interest in infecting people with deep rooted self doubting based evilness? By way of drugs? I still maintain Ariel did a more successful job converting one of the main characters into the most frustrating part of the whole damn book. I had a significant desire to bitchslap Rushton for letting himself be so easily manipulated. And then knee him in the balls for being such a dick to Elspeth. But, I get way too into Isobelle Carmody books. So forgive my overeager reactions to Obernewtyn.
Anywho, Alyzon Whitestarr... brilliance! A fantastic look at how people could develop a tendency to be evil, to do bad things, to hurt each other and themselves... an amazing look at how life affects certain people in different ways because of who they are at their very core... so well done
Then, I saw something on a bio about Isobelle, and how she says she writes not to try to persuade people to listen to her beliefs, not just to tell stories, but to ask questions... to question what makes people who they are. And I GET that. I've been in the midst of reading a few other books that are just making me go "what the fuck?" because they're good plots, but they sound like someone giving a dull narration of day to day life "so and so woke up... so and so went to the bathroom" etc. But books like Obernewtyn are so intriguing because the author poured herself into them... she writes books to understand and better phrase her own questions about life, to find new ways to explore what makes people tick, just to get an all around feel for humanity. (On that note, I'd like to quickly interject that I think what makes Twilight so damn intriguing despite how sickeningly cliche the plot is, and how not good of a writer Stehenie Meyer is is because she truly, truly puts herself into the process of writing... so even while we're going "this is so bad... why am I reading this... mock the fangirls", people like me still actually want to read the whole damn series...)
So, while reading this statement of hers, I'm instantly drawn to the concept of my own writing. What Bound by Blood means to me. How I wrote it not to tell a story, not to try to get published someday, but how I used the whole thing to better understand my life and what was happening to by means of people who weren't having remotely the same experiences as I was. Thoughts and ideas used to try to target my own muddled up confusion about life into other people's circumstances.
And so I'm back to writing. I've finally bought a red journal that's going to house the handwritten copy when I'm satisfied with the final draft. And I'm writing like mad.
A lot of things in my life have been making the messages from Bound by Blood truly hit home. For instance, dating Chris has finally made me understand the point I tried to make about names. In fact, earlier this year, I went on a couple dates with a guy from work named James... and the whole time I kept thinking "this is so weird, he's nothing like the James in my story, I don't want him to come to mind when I'm writing... weeeeeird". But the whole time in the story when Lara still doesn't know his name (and at that, it took me a while to get used to continuing to write a character named Lara after I met one of my best friends, Lara...), a lot of the included quotes from the red book are abou her saying that too often we use names to define people, and devoid of a name, we begin to see people truly for what they are. And here I am, in a relationship with a guy who has sort of the same name as an ex boyfriend (one is Christian, one is Christopher, both go by Chris... yes, this did weird me out at first)... and as we've spent all this time together and gotten closer and closer, I realize he is not at all defined by his name, and that I spent too much time being weirded out by similarities in names (Chris and Chris, me having the same name as Chris's mother, me going on a date with a James), and judging the past on shared names (this happens in the story with the double David Ansamari issue... and in my own life with the whole god damn Nick/Nick thing...)
So, by putting it the way I did for Lara's writing, by projecting all my own thoughts onto someone experiencing them through different circumstances, I was really able to explore what all these things were.
And it's making my writing stronger, I think. I'm on my third "from scratch" writing of Bound by Blood, and I think this time I finally get it.
And yes, Isobelle Carmody's genius explanation behind her work has inspired me, too. She always inspires me. And I can't wait for the final two Obernewtyn books
What would happen if, instead of me popping into my own story, characters from my story jumped into other stories?
That's a fun one
Let's just start with Lara. I'm the most bonded with her, I think. I know way more about her than I'd like to. Hell, I know more about her than SHE does, because I actually know the whole Ansamari curse story AND the origin of the inhumans better than James did when he told her the family story. So... HA!
Insertion into a couple of my stories?
Well let's see... there's the Secret Weaver story... I thought this would be an interesting one primarily because Lara herself can change the experiences of people around her by projecting emotion. The difference is that the Secret Weavers "weave" a "thread" into someone else's thoughts, while Lara simply projects her own memories externally onto others. Plus, it's modern times, real world, and all the Secret Weavers are technically human. Thus, she'd be at a complete loss for understanding where she was, what's going on, and why people are using gifts who have no inhuman traits whatsoever. And she'd probably shrivel up and become a quivering nobody.
Vampire Chronicles? Ooooh boy she'd HATE Collin... HATE HATE HATE Collin. She would probably go psycho bitch on his ass and lock him up in his room, take over his apartment, figure out what vampires are, and seek personal vengeance on all of vampire kind worse than even Clara could dream up. Becaaaause... Lara is badass, when it comes down to it
How about just plain old real world insertion?
I'm imagining her just popping up on the street in front of my house. Such things would occurr as "where am I?" "what am I doing here?" "why are there all these little houses attached to each other?" and "why are there vehicles sans horses?"
She wouldn't adapt. Because Lara hates adapting. It's one of her aggravating traits. It took her half the fucking story to adapt to James at all. And even then, it's pretty much the only thing she adapts to. But, she'd probably willingly put on jeans and a t-shirt, because she's worn men's clothing for the sake of travelling before... she'd be grateful for nail polish, since it kinda doesn't exist in her world, and she resents the visibility of silver in her nails. In a world without inhumans, she'd try even harder not to stand out, sooo... yeah, nail polish galore for her. She probably wouldn't go anywhere alone. She's used to having trees to hide in, bushes to sleep behind, and secluded trails to take by herself. Even though in theory it's easier to hide amongst lots of people, she'd be paranoid and feel put on display, so she'd never want to try to figure out how this world works by herself. Plain and simple.
Oooother authors' stories?
First thing that comes to mind is Obernewtyn... I think she'd fit right in with the Misfits. I mean, she doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere. She knows she's not human, but being an Ansamari, she doesn't identify with other inhumans, and her inhuman gifts kinda make her feel like a freak. Sooo having some special abnormal traits, plus her inability to conform to society would equal automatic Misfit... plus, the concept of computers is a bit new to the Obernewtyn characters anyway, so she wouldn't feel totally clueless and unique in discovering all this stuff for the first time! Basically, Obernewtyn is actually a good fit for her as a character. And that's unintentional, because I wrote Bound by Blood YEAAARS before reading Obernewtyn.
Erm... His Dark Materials. If she were to bump into Will or Lyra or someone, they'd just assume she walked in from another world anyway, so she'd be greeted normally (depending who she ran into)... although, if this were post Amber Spyglass, there'd be demands as to how she managed world crossing of course. And she wouldn't really fit in anywhere anyway, 'cause all those worlds are so very established and stationary, and so is she. No real room for adaptation on either side.
That's all for now!
I blame the new boyfriend
Anywho, after reading Inkspell, my thoughts have now turned to.. what the hell would happen if I could appear in one of my own stories?
I kinda wanted to ignore The Vampire Chronicles since it is very much in the real world, buuuuut hey... if I did randomly show up in the midst of the characters, I'd SO go shopping with Janelle... and since I'm the writer, I'm sure I could persuade her to share her riches with me... yaaaaay for rich, fashion obsessed character.
But mainly, the premise I was thinking of was if I could somehow appear in the midst of Bound by Blood or The Red Book
So... in either era, I'd probably be mistaken for an inhuman at first glance, because not many humans have blue eyes, but I'm sure people would eventually look at my hands and figure it out
If it was Bound by Blood era, I'd freak the hell out and head straight for Zhasgradt, because quite frankly, I'd rather not killed by the overly gruesome, maniacal characters I've made up.... let's see... my name would be considered really strange in that generation, so people would assume I was foreign. It would be pretty obvious in my actions that I was low class (as a side note, the low class in these stories is VERY much the same mindset as the modern day middle class, but considerably less money.... so yes, personality wise, I would come across as their low class), but could still probably seek refuge in the palace. I'd definitely try to befriend Lara and convince her of what had happened to me... surely she'd be crazy enough to actually believe it. If not, she'd probably just hate me, like she hates... er... everyone.
If it was Red Book era, I could probably get away with wearing my own clothes, assuming I was wearing one of my longer skirts and some sort of a blouse. Would definitely pass for middle class, although with how much coffee I drink, people would assume I was filthy rich (considered a delicacy to them). My goal would be to go to the hotel and hunt down Isabel, the most outrageously open minded character in the whole damn story, and very loyal to and overprotective of her friends. She'd have my back, I'm sure.
So last night, I had a dream that's just begging to be included in a story. The dream itself was creepy. I can't remember where I was when it started out, but at a point, I had a meeting with these two men who were supposed to lead me to some sort of initiation thing. They were both older, and I was slightly weirded out, but not so much until one first asked if I was single, then proceeded to pick me up and carry me. We were in a mall. I kept screaming for help, but soon came to learn that most of the shopkeepers were part of this thing I was supposed to be initiated into.
I remember distinctly passing this strange sort of wall which was supposed to lead into an Asian restauran that was actually a cover for a prostitute/mafia ring. We finally came to a big fancy department store at the end and proceeded to attempt the initation, but I somehow knocked the guy out and started to run away. I knew he was chasing me, so I ducked into a shop where I knew he had control over the girl working there, but decided to risk it anyway. It was some sort of import gift shop. When I got in, I remembered being told I had an unusually strong skill in whatever it was these people could do, and I somehow willed myself to not be found. I could still see myself clearly, but the girl running the shop came over, grabbed my neck and said "you're invisible right now, but I can sense people's body heat... you're safe with me, I won't tell him you're here." So finally, he came into the shop, and the invisibility started to waver, so I started to run for it again, willing myself to go back to being invisible, and ran to hide behind the wall in front of the Asian restaurant. When I saw the man pass by, I took off into this side alley thing that led me to a trail, and I didn't know if I was still invisble or not, but suddenly, all I could do was pull myself along on my hands and knees.
It was clearly a very interesting mini portion of a much bigger story, but here's the question.
Should it be its own plot, or should it be incorporated into a story I'm currently revamping?
Let me set the stage for revamped story. This was originally a vampire story, it's now about a new "paranormal"... Secret Weavers (thanks to Julia for supplying random words that became inspiration)
In the story, a single mother visits her therapist, who specializes in paranormal occurrences, to tell about the strange events that led up to her being who she is. The story is told through what happened in the past.
A once popular girl who has hid her OCD from her friends has her life come crashing to a halt when her best friend and ex boyfriend start up a relationship behind her back. At the same time, the neighborhood freak becomes the only person she can confide in, and when her friends drop her for talking to him, he becomes the only friend she has at all. Without even meaning to, she is sucked into a dangerous world where people with special skills can weave a version of reality into other's minds (though not without much difficulty), and is attacked by the gang that once killed her new friend's father, simply for never being "woven" into their world.
Part cliche teen novel about not judging others by their appearance, part "dealing with disorders", part intense fantasy
It's a story I'm particularly proud of, and it's hard to decide if I want to bring in the new elements from the dream, but it could very well be cool.
I'm really picky when it comes to what I read, and what I'll write
I primarily only write fantasy, because that's my way of putting an original twist on things
I do read a mix of fantasy and standard fiction, be it modern or historical... but fantasy tends to come up as the one I read the most of
I believe this genre has soooo much potential, and most of it is so wasted
I see book after book of ridiculous overused cliches, the right fantasy creatures, the overkill amounts of sex, the way that it's so completely out of our world it's obviously meant for people who can't connect to reality at all...
One of my biggest problems, predictably, is adult fantasy. Scan the titles in a fantasy department, and you see an abundance of cliche elves doing cliche things, you see space age robots blasting people with super cool weapons that you've seen 500 times already, you see cheap trashy erotica in the guise of something out of this world enough to be labelled fantasy or sci fi... give me a break!
I will, however, concede to having respect for Robin Hobb, Jacqueline Carey, Juliet Marillier, and Cecilia Dart-Thornton (and Tanith Lee, but she falls into both adult and young adult...)
Young adult fantasy seems more geared to taking real people and putting them in comprehensible situations, bringing actual social issues in a recognizable form into unbeliable situations... whether this be invented worlds with very real seeming characters (Tanith Lee's Claidi Journals, for instance... deals with emotional issues in abundance, as well as social status, experimentation with human lives, and how people in many different places are tied together... all through the diary of someone who is so clearly not from the real world that you would never recognize a single place she goes)..., or real life which introduces to us fantasy elements in places we already know (Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere, while technically in the land of death, deals directly with a very much real world experience, and only shows fantasy in the life after death concept and how it affects the living conditions of those already dead). Then, there's those ones that cleverly mask the real world in a place so fantasy it takes several books to grasp that act (Obernewtyn, a world so torn apart by war and technological mayhem that it has come full circle to be somewhat of an old fashioned society, with place names changed over the years, a very different form of society in place, and supernatural abilities a driving force in nearly all the social issues mentioned)
In my own writing, I tend to do a lot of real world turned supernatural (Vampire Chronicles, plus two unnamed in the works projects), balanced out with some nice complete fantasy (Bound By Blood, which I have done everything in my effort to make about real people, social issues, and philosophy, despite the world and the world's rules being far removed from our own)
1) What author do you own the most books by?
J.K. Rowling... I'm ALMOST embarrassed to admit that, but it's true.
2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I can only answer this question if foreign language copies count. I own two copies of two books... one is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban... I own the original British print (because the U Bookstore did a sneaky advance sale before the American print run ever happened), and the French version (because I was studying French at the time...)
I also own The Amber Spyglass in both English and Japanese
3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not remotely
4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Rushton from Obernewtyn
5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
One of the first 4 Harry Potter books, or Son of the Shadows... I'm not sure which
6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Definitely Harry Potter... unless that's when I read those unicorn books... ah screw it, I can't remember
7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
The Naming... I feel bad about that, because it came strongly reccomended by a friend, but I was so utterly let down and bored by it
8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Oh jeez, I can't decide... I'm fairly certain I've read all 6 existing volumes of Obernewtyn in less than a year, so it would be down to decided a favorite of those... probably either Ashling (which I know I read in August, it's only the first two I can't remember) or The Stone Key...
9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
(Obviously no tags...) THE WHOLE FREAKING OBERNEWTYN SERIES!!!!
10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
I dunno!
11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Um... well after reading all the Obernewtyn fan musings about a movie with Ben Barnes playing Rushton, I totally got hooked on that idea. But I dunno, really. I think the best book to movie adaptation possible has already been made (Stardust), so I don't really think too much about it anymore
12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
The Golden Compass... stupid assholes for actually doing it -_- Only because of my personal attachments to it, though
13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I'm fairly certain I had nightmares when I finished the first Obernewtyn, but mostly my dreams involving fictional characters have just been from movies...
14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
Um... I don't know!
15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
To me, the only thing that makes a book difficult is if it's too boring to get through to the end. I've erm... never exactly had trouble with advanced English, so "difficult" books don't really phase me, and so it's hard for me to judge that answer. However, we could expand on that and discuss themes and interpretation, and rank difficult as most confusing to define with anything absolute, and most frustrating in terms of trying to get easy meaning back... in which case I'd actually say His Dark Materials
16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
I don't actually WATCH Shakespeare so much... but I now have a brilliant Shakespeare anthology, so as for reading, that remains to be seen!
17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
All my favorite authors are Aussies, dammit!
18) Roth or Updike?
Haven't read...
19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
See above
20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
I'm a Shakespeare geek
21) Austen or Eliot?
And after years of being lulled to sleep by it, developed a weakness for Austen
22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I kinda stopped reading for fun throughout my senior year of high school. And let's face it... ANY gap in reading is an embarrassment to me, because knowing books is part of my job...
23) What is your favorite novel?
Oh god... wrong person to ask this question of... there's always His Dark Materials, close to my hear since I finished just before 8th grade. There's Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, positively riveting, eye opening, and much more real to me than most teen novels. And of course, There's Obernewtyn.... best obscure Aussie books EVER
24) Play?
I dunno... I always liked that Russian Cinderalla script we did at Studio East when I was a kid
25) Poem?
I tend to appreciate poetry as a whole and not focus on specific ones, oddly
26) Essay?
The only one that's ever stood out in my mind was about sensitivity censorship, which we read in 8th grade English...
27) Short story?
There's this thing I read in a magazine when I was a kid that stayed me with for a very long time, but I cannot for the life of me remember the name... in theme it reminded me very much of Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day", but it was about a flower that opened for all of one hour and gave the only known form of music to these people trapped in silence... it was really eerie and I had no idea what it was doing in a kid's magazine, but it was wonderful
28) Work of non-fiction?
I don't really read non fiction?
29) Who is your favorite writer?
I have several... Juliet Marillier held my attention for so long that I feel she can't be ignored, but the woman needs to stop going back to Sevenwaters... The Bridei Chronicles showed how far she'd come as a writer, then she jumps back and tacks on a fourth book to what was supposed to be a trilogy she finished years ago?
Gabrielle Zevin, while not having many books under her belt (three plus a screenplay), is wonderful, thought provoking, and has this way of bringing the rawest, most honest human emotions into totally absurd, and sometimes borderline fantasy concepts. She's brilliant and better write more books
And Isobelle Carmody just rocks intensely for managing to create Obernewtyn
30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
Christopher Paolini
31) What is your desert island book?
Huh?
32) And ... what are you reading right now?
Forest Mage by Robin Hobb
And first, a gripe
Nothing irks me more than something like "Oni demons"... seriously, to anyone who reads Japanese, that comes across as "the demon demons", and I'm like "f'real? WTF?"
And second, my brain following along the awesome train of thought apparently shared by Cassandra Clare...
So I'm reading chapter 9 and thinking "why do so freaking many plot lines involving angels or references to angels, or fallen angels, or whatever... HAVE BROTHERS AND SISTERS FALLING IN LOV
And then in chapter 10, someone was reading the manga Angel Sanctuary, and I just about busted up howling with laughter, because that's exactly what I was thinking of when Jace and Clary were busy making out in chapter 9...
For the ignorant, Angel Sanctuary is about the human reincarnation of the angel Alexiel, and her guardian angel Gabriel... in one form, they're incarnated as brother and sister in Japan, and, growing up with no memories of heaven, no idea what they really are, fall madly in love, and incidentally want to stay in their human brother/sister forms and have a relationship that way. It's also by my favorite manga-ka EVER (Kaori Yuki, known for actually putting thought into her manga rather than cheesy nerd stuff, and for being a true artist who does watercolors in her spare time...), and is one of the few manga that could actually be put into novel form without boring me to sleep... in fact, that would probably make it make MORE sense, so that the rest of us don't have to get a headache over the Lucifer plotline
I love this excerpt
This scene already exists within the original, Lara's POV narrative. As a writing exercise/developing other characters project I was doing (which also includes some Ari background, will get to those later, as they don't appear in the actual story at all!), I wrote it from James's POV.
Setting the scene: Lara has just run away from her safe hiding place in Zhasgradt because she told Nadea the truth, and couldn't stay there and endanger everyone. She still doesn't have her memories, but has accepted that James is being honest that Nadea is her mother and Ari is just a filthy whore. Lara is in pain/getting sick because of a cut she got when attacked by outcasts several months before. James explains that inhuman poison combined with malicious intent of inhuman gift will not heal unless completely extracted, and the victim will just keep getting sicker and sicker, and a woman, especially with a wound on the stomach like Lara has, will most likely become infertile. So he removes the poison from her and it culminates in a somewhat awkward romantic encounter.
Aaaaand... here's the scene.
The wind blew against my face, catching my hair and pulling it through the crisp night air. She was inside, and that was enough to drive me out here. Defeat and longing are never good to a man’s pride.
I wondered how much time would pass before she figured out what she was, if she even felt inhuman with the blood curse. I had lived for my whole eighteen years with the knowledge of what I was and what that meant. The intermittent feeling of the gift was always there, and I could not imagine even breathing if I were unaware of the power I held. Even as children, she’d spoke of not knowing what her gift was, and so I wondered if it was possible for one of our kind to feel human through and through.
Someday, she would remember. I was determined for that. Child I may have been, but none could deny that I loved her then and still did to this day. A strange feeling passed through me as I recalled her tearing the dress off after swearing she would not let me touch her as David had. I had tried, truly, I had kept myself composed long enough to heal her. But why had I kissed her? And why had she allowed it? Out of fear? Had David destroyed her so completely she wouldn’t even push me away when I was taking horrible risks? But it had felt so good to touch her, even if only for a moment, and even if it had only filled my mind with all the things that could have been if our world were different.
“What are you doing?” a delicate voice asked, her words as good as music when not filled with anger. It was intoxicating. But I would keep myself in check, I would never hurt her. I loved her beyond all reason.
“Have you ever looked at the most beautiful thing in the world?” I replied, fighting to keep calm. “Is there something you would die to have as your own, but you can’t, because some whore saw fit to change the world? I came out here because I couldn’t stand it anymore. I couldn’t look on the face of my wife to be and know that she hates me with every fiber of her being.”
Her face was unreadable, and I realized I was fast losing control of myself and my emotions.
“I don’t hate you,” was her reply. Her voice was small, confusion and hurt lacing her words. She sounded miserable. It made me want only more to be able to comfort her. “I wanted to, but I can’t. I’ve tried so hard to ignore it, but I suppose it’s my heart remembering what my mind cannot. Every time I tell myself I hate you, I realize that’s exactly opposite of the truth. I didn’t push you away. It’s not because I was frozen in shock. It’s because you don’t scare me. Not like David. If I was afraid of you, I’d never find the courage to yell at you like I do.”
That was all I’d needed to hear. She hadn’t pushed me away because she hadn’t wanted to. If she said it wasn’t fear, I would believe her, for she swore she would never go back on the Blood Bond. She would not lie to me now. She had wanted it. Perhaps not as much as my body burned in need, but she had wanted that kiss nonetheless. And somehow, it gave me the courage to tell her what it meant to be an Ansamari.
In the meantime, current book rant:
Still reading Heir to Sevenwaters at the moment... and wow. JOHNNY IS GAY??????????? I take back Juliet Marillier not surprising me with who people end up with... I mean, Johnny has been a character in the series since he was freaking BORN halfway through Son of the Shadows... he's the child of my absolute favorite couple from the whole series. And I never, never, never in a million years would've guessed he was in a relationship with a man. When that revelation was uncovered, my brain seriously pulled a nice little "what the fuck?"
And Cathal is starting to remind me a lot of Bran... the whole mysterious parentage, muddled, secretive past, mother dying at a young age, defensive and doesn't belong in polite society thing. Obviously there's a bazillion differences... such as him clearly being a bit more of a pansy when it comes to having sex, him not having an entire half of his body covered in tattoos, and him not being a previous outlaw mercenary... plus he's infinitely less cool than Bran, primarily because Bran was from Son of the Shadows and that's my favorite book (AND HIS FREAKING SON IS GAY! Still not over the shock from that one yet... no, I am not bothered by it. Just EXTREMELY surprised)
Sometimes, you just know who will end up together. Sometimes, certain authors have patterns that you latch on to, and you just plain know. Sometimes, it eludes you until the damn end.
So let's start with a "you just know"
Juliet Marillier. It's been too long since I've read Wolfskin and Foxmask to remember, but I'm pretty sure I called it spot on in Foxmask. Unfortunately, I don't actually remember the characters... at all... so yeaaaah, doesn't help
Sevenwaters... so obvious it's ridiculous. Sorcha and Hugh... you knew from the second she got to England... Liadan and Bran... no shit! Eammon was an obvious out from the beginning, no matter how much he wanted her, and you could tell almost as soon as he was introduced that Bran wasn't as big of an asshole as you're supposed to believe he is. Fainne and Darragh... well it's been a while, but I remember it being predictable. And Clodagh and Cathal? I only just started reading Heir to Sevenwaters YESTERDAY, and she liked a different guy, and it was still so obvious that I cheated and read the ending and was like "boom, called that"
However, she did throw me for a loop with book two of the Bridei Chronicles... Bridei ending up what's her face was predictable... creepy, in a sense, since they were raised together, but I never had a doubt. But no, it was Faolan and Ana that totally broke the pattern. They should have ended up together, it was OBVIOUS, they totally needed to be together, and they never did, and Ana got with some guy just 'cause he was hot, and I was actually mad by the time I shut the book. I don't own book 3 so I can't remember the name of whoever Faolan actually did end up with, but seriously... they didn't even seem right together, 'CAUSE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANA!!!!!!
Then there's ones that make you go "wait, what?"
Tanith Lee...
I, of course, can't remember character names from Biting the Sun, buuuuut I do remember that the guy who stole her appearance and proclaimed love for her and got her pregnant at the end was so ANYTHING but what I would have expected... you knew all along they liked each other, but it was just... woah... them actually being together was not so predictable.
I don't remember who ended up together in Piratica, so no comment
And then there's The Claidi Journals... at a point, Claidi and Argul were obvious. And they were introduced fairly early on (end of the first book, I think? I dunno, I only have 3and 4...)... nonetheless, you spend the entire first book totally in the dark, book 2 thinking "meh, they seem to be separated by circumstance, not a chance", the third book wondering what's going on until he suddenly reappears and you're like "WAIT, WHAT?", and book 4 thinking he's going to leave her. So all in all, a bit of a shocker!
Neil Gaiman, too, seems to have a pattern... you can guaruntee that if a love interest is mentioned in the beggining of the book, they won't be together at the end. While it is often extremely unpredictable if the characters will end up with anyone or not, one thing's for sure... Tristran and Yvaine was soooo obvious. Following the Neil Gaiman flawless pattern, Victoria was clearly not meant for Tristran... but Yvaine was definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY obvious
Harry Potter was so obvious it was painful... if you somehow managed to make it to book 7 (hell, to book 4!) without knowing that Harry would hook up with Ginny and Hermione would finally jump Ron's bones, then you were reading waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much fanfiction that suggested otherwise.
And the one that's bugging me to no end... Obernewtyn... freakin' Elspeth and Rushton!
I mean, it's obvious that they're meant for each other. But they've already had too many plot twists in their relationship, and I don't think they could survive another. I'm about as on edge about the future of their relationship as I was for Jude and Tommy during season 4 of Instant Star. And if there is a bad ending on their relationship, I will have a very similar emotion to that at the end of IS (want to break something...)
So.... this week marks the announcement of the start of a project I had an idea for a while back... Janelle's diary!
I feel like, aside from Collin and Riley, she's become one of the more important characters (as a note for future reference... Emily will be featured as a strong character in Vol. 2 but will never really achieve main character status, and Clara will remain a minor character until Vol. 3, whereas Riley will continue to be a main even after she and Collin break up), and that she has a lot of past that isn't revealed. Writing her diary, skipping about all over her life, gives me a chance to look inside the mind of the girliest and most charming of the Jenkinson vampire family.
It will begin next Tuesday, as I will hopefully be out my hand brace by then.
And last week's HDM gushing session gave me a new idea, completely inspired by the fact that I've read hundreds of books, and can probably only gush endlessly about 10 or so authors.
With how regularly I read, though, I never run out of new books to think about, while the amount of times I'm inspired to faithfully follow an author to the end is much more limited.
So, I'm going to mix it up a bit, and do two different book gushing sort of things for Mondays... when I can think of a good author, I'll gush about an author. Aaaand when I can think about some fantastic personal meaning a book and/or series has for me, I'll gush about that instead.
As I'm kinda torn about which to do today, I'm gonna go for killing two birds with one stone... (hey, it IS technically Monday right now)
Cecilia Dart-Thornton, and most specifcally, The Bitterbynde.
I am extremely skeptical of fantasy authors who do adult writing, as I discussed with a customer the other day. There's cliches abound, tons of roleplay-esque books, and so many god damn dragons that I kind of want to strangle someone. YA fantasy seems so much more varied. However, every once in a while, there is an adult fantasy writer who really jumps out, pulls you in, and uses writing techniques other than "dragon tamer got laid, the end". (And, to be fair, Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy is one of my favorite adult fantasy novels, and it does involve dragons... cool, unique dragons whose coccoons got made into boats) Cecilia Dart-Thornton is one of these stupendous authors.
She is, like two of my other favorite authors, Australian. I dunno what it is about Australians and writing books. One such author is Juliet Marillier, who sometimes tends to lean towards romance novel cliches in the "let me punch you, you horny old female" manner, but I adore most of her work nonetheless, Son of the Shadows is one of my all time favorites (LOOOOOVE), and she wrote a love triangle in the Bridei Chronicles that made me mad at myself, it was that well depicted. My other Aussie favorite is the brilliant Isobelle Carmody, who I gushed about the week before last, who invented pretty much the greatest work of brilliance to ever grace the YA bookshelves with a crossover between old fashioned fantasy and post apocalyptic sci-fi (Obernewtyn junkieeeeee!).
Anywho, she has only two series out... one is the Crowthistle Chronicles, which is kinda hard to explain because it's so... intricate, and it's been a while. It's a really well patterned story that gives a lot of history to the characters, strongly ties everyone together because of mistakes of the past, and invents a totally believable world that sucks you in and develops personalities aplenty. I admire this series greatly.
Even more wonderful is my excess gushy series of the week... The Bitterbynde
In the Bitterbynde, you are introduced to the amazing lies that have bridged the gap between the faeran and the real world, the closed doors and strange technology built on their magic. An infamous and often incorrectly answered riddle is explained in stupendous detail (there are two brothers guarding two doors. They can only say yes or no. One can only lie, one can only tell the truth. You get one question. How do you phrase it, and which door do you choose? I once attempted to explain the answer to someone who claimed it was "Is your door the right one?" and berated me for thinking my "much too complicated" explanation was the right one... and here goes... the question you must ask is "if i ask your brother if your door is the right one, what will he tell me?" If the answer is "no", you choose the door of the brother you asked. If the answer is "yes", you choose the other brother's door... there is no way to make it any more simple, and the series even explained WHY that answer is correct... thank you, awesome books!)
There is intensely passionate love, lies, secret lives, complete loss of memory, an epic journey, magical chess to kick Harry Potter in the ass, a cave full of epic treasure, and references to classic stories aplenty...
I was inspired, riveted, fell in love with characters, felt backstabbed, saw the act of retrieving memories, felt the punch in the gut of the ending, and so much more besides. Definitely a favorite in the extreme.
I rewrote the scene and had James come in and display excellent inhuman fury and drive David out before he could actually... erm... get it in (that sounds so immature when talking about a delicate and depressing matter, but yeah). But I am posed with problems on all sides.
One is that Lairene needs to be at least severely emotionally scarred by him. This could be accomplished prior to the act of course, but he'd have to be a real creep in that moment before he actually accomplishes sex for it to damage her that much.
Also, there's the argument that it's just a little weird that incest has shown up in this story twice. I mean, gross much! But I can't rewrite it so that David isn't her brother or else I change the ENTIRE plot of Jonathan turning his life around and raising a child, and then history repeating itself while a man named David Ansamari repeats the crime of his father. They have to be Jonathan's children or I have to rework a massive chunk of the plot
Then there's the fact that it's creepy incest references whether David succeeds or not, so does it make a difference?
Then of course, there's the times that Lairene wonders how James feels that someone else took her virginity, and wonders if that depresses him. But she could just generally wonder if he feels guilty for not suspecting the deep seated evil in David first.
GAH!
So... should David rape her, or should David attempt to rape her and get the shit beaten out of him by James? And will it actually be less creepy if he doesn't fully succeed?
Anywho, as I said... was thinking about Obernewtyn, and was suddenly brought back to something I wrote for my 7th grade English class. Now, this is probably hiding in my box of stuff from school I actually held onto, but unfortunately, I no longer have a record of it on my computer. During the great 1 am computer failure of '08, a lot of files were deleted that I could never get back. Including the original draft to one of my stories, the insanely old school story that sparked the idea for Bound by Blood, and a good deal of inspired but poorly written fanfiction from my geeky junior high days which could and has served as plot ideas for original fiction (actually, the training in the cave in Bound by Blood was taken from an old fanfiction I wrote and no logner have... go figure).
So the project was, to the best of my memory, writing about being a survivor of a nuclear attack. Either that or some sort of disaster and I picked nuclear war as my theme. But I think the first guess is more acurrate. We could do whatever we wanted with it... have just a city be destroyed, or have the whole world be destroyed. Be alone, be in a group, meet up with another wandering survivor. I wrote about having a huge chunk of some placed wiped out and finally finding a city and one of my classmates after weeks of wandering. I just thought that was kinda cool, because that's such an interesting question in fiction, and I've been asked that question before for the purpose of creative writing, and there's so much you can do with the concept of nuclear holocaust, and I think Isobelle Carmody presented us with one of the most unique. I love how when presented with the exact same idea... post nuclear holocaust world... there are so many different angles to take. The joy of writing! Yay
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