Barry Lyga Rocks! Contest extension

If you've been over to Sara's blog, then you know that we met Barry this weekend at ALA! I didn't think it was possible, but he actually rocks even MORE than we originally thought.

So we're extending our contest! Go over to Sara's blog for details! (Sorry I'm not posting a very good post right now, but I just wanted everyone to know about the extension. I'm really busy right now. And my kitten is all up in the pile of books I got while I was there, so I have to go save them.)

Also, be watching, because we got some AWESOME books I know you will all want to read--and we're giving them away! So there will be more contests coming soon to a blog near you! And also pictures. (I MET HOLLY BLACK I MET HOLLY BLACK OMG--I can't tell you how much I love her books.) And possibly a rewritten Taylor Swift song. We'll just have to see about that last one.

;)

CONTEST!!!

Author Barry Lyga rocks. He rocks so much that Sara, Carol and I have decided to hold a Barry Lyga contest, where YOU, my dear reader, can win a SIGNED copy of one of his books.

There are four prizes and the contest is sooooo easy to enter! Here's what you can win:

An ARC of Archvillain

An ARC of Goth Girl Rising

A copy of Hero-Type (We're giving away TWO of these babies!)

Here's how to enter:

1. You must be a follower here, at my blog, and Carol's blog, and Sara's blog!
2. You must fill out the entry form, found here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHgtVkJjX0tEbjJKa2xqS0otRWRkd1E6MQ

If you want extra points, here are a few of the ways to get them:

1. Participate in Barry Lyga Rocks!! Day (Monday, 6/28) by leaving an open letter to Barry on your blog, telling him why you think he's awesome. FIFTEEN extra entries for doing this!!(We'll enter everyone's blog addresses in a Mr. Linky on that day, so the letters are easily found.
2. Blog about this contest. THREE extra entries.
3. Tweet about this contest. ONE extra entry. (Please leave @saramcclung or @cvaldezmiller in your tweet so we can track!)

The contest will run from today until Monday, June 28, 2010 at midnight. We'll post the winners that week!

Good luck!!

This post might be PG-13 rated.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post about things I can't say in a fantasy novel. (Refresher for those of you who missed it, I lamented my favorite slang words and phrasing were not available to me in a world that is not this one and that is not even based on this time period.)

But since my first two (finished) projects were YA, but this third project is adult (and where, I have to admit, I'm really hitting my stride,) I thought it might be fun to talk about some of the things I CAN say.

No, sorry, we're not getting dirty. Well... not overtly. C'mon, I'm not an erotica writer. ;)

First off, romantic scenes are a lot LOT more fun. Don't get me wrong, I like a good fifteen-year-old first-kiss scene as much as the next person, but it's a wholly different kind of fun when the people kissing for the first time are adults, and certain articles of clothing may or may not start to come off. I'm not even talking sex scenes. I just mean that the heat in a sexually charged scene is completely different in an adult novel, the implications are different, how the characters act is way different, and how they respond to each other.... (Seriously, minds out of the gutter.)

Curse words come next. I'm not one for gratuitous swearing (I'm not really one for gratuitous anything, except for cupcakes and pictures of kittens) but sometimes it just fits a character profile to have them swear once in a while. (I don't use the most popular swear word of the modern age, just the one that starts with a D, because the rest don't seem fantasy enough for me. But it's nice to know nobody will get offended at me for corrupting their kids with it.)

Last thing is gory descriptions. I'm something of a closet horror/gore fan (and yet I'm afraid to watch scary movies...) I mean, I don't read splatterpunk in my spare time or anything, but I do like medical shows, or movies with lots of blood like Fight Club and Gladiator (which was actually rather tame if you ask me) for some absurdly weird reason. I'm also not giving any gratuitous gore in my novels, but when something DOES call for gore, I definitely get to be more creative. And my current project is a dark fantasy and there are rather a lot of dead bodies, so this comes up not infrequently.

So. What are your favorite parts of writing your genre or age group that you just wouldn't be able to do as well in any other? :)

Book Review: Clockwork Heart

This is a review I posted originally in September of last year on my livejournal, but I think it deserves a re-post because none of you fantastic blogger people got to read it, and I need to pimp this book out because it is THAT good.



So, this is my review of Clockwork Heart, by Dru Pagliassotti:

This book was so fantastic that I spent all day Saturday reading, and I left a party early so I could come home and finish the book (stayed up until 2:00 AM finishing even though my eyes were drooping and I was half-asleep already.) This book was the kind of book that was so fantastically crafted, it made me simultaneously despair for my own writing, and smile that I'd found something this good.

If you couldn't tell by that description, I absolutely loved this book. It's a steampunk on the science fiction side of things (rather than the fantasy side, which is what I write and what WICKED GENTLEMEN by Ginn Hale is) and the world building is gorgeously done and really clean. I loved reading about their world--and it was all set in a city, which makes me really happy, because I love urban settings.

And, I think the romantic elements made my heart leap more than it did when I was in middle school, and I realized for the first time in my life that my Big Crush liked me back. THAT'S how good it was. There are certainly a lot of good romantic sub-plots out there, but this one was one of the best I've read in a while, simply because the two main characters worked so well together. None of it was forced, neither of them were too flawed or too perfect, and I didn't feel like Pagliassotti was throwing situations at them simply because those situations would induce them to makeout. It's not hard to get a 4/5 romance rating out of me, but, ironically enough, it's near to impossible to make me take that next step up and give a romantic plot a 5/5. Well, this one gets a 5/5, hands down, no argument.

I think the only problem I had with it was certain somewhat manufactured descriptions of one of the main characters, and the way the book ended. The final chapter was more like an epilogue, and I think what happened in it was too abrupt. It would've been better in a sequel.

Anyway, this one comes highly recommended from me, and is definitely going on the special bookshelf in my room, rather than on the huge ones in my library, so that I can re-read scenes or read it again, or possibly just stare at it and remember how happy it made me.

Ode to the delete key

My dearest delete key,

I must, under good conscience, apologize for my absolutely abominable treatment of you. You must think me the worst sort of vixen, for the way I use you, I abuse you, and then I neglect you for weeks at a time, leaving you to assume, I can only imagine, that I no longer love you.

Please, my darling, do not fret, do not ever allow yourself to believe that I could cease loving you. You will always have my undying devotion, for you are an irreplaceable key, and I could not live without your existence there at the corner of my keyboard. Yes, I can hear the consternation in your voice now as you accuse me of cheating with your brother, the backspace key, but I plead with you to understand that while I find backspace useful for small sorts of editing, you, my dearest delete, are the heart of my revisions. Without you, I would have superfluous scenes, ridiculous chapters, terrible prose, extra pages, and I just cannot abide by those things. Without you, why, I would be no writer at all. Look at the way you've just cut five-hundred useless words from chapter twenty-four, streamlining it where before it lagged with extra baggage and darlings ready for the guillotine.

My love for you is undying, and you will forever live within my heart and brain, and the mere knowledge that you and I have such a strong love will shoot doubt into the hearts of even the most stubborn bad prose and plot holes. There is no other pair of true love and mutual understanding but you and I, my heart.

Yours most devotedly,

Alexandra

What I will be reading

Thanks to everyone who enabled my indecisive tendencies and voted in my poll! Soulless beat out Will Grayson, Will Grayson by one vote, so I'll be reading Soulless first, and WG, WG second. Then I'll trickle down through the rest of the list... and then it will probably be time for another poll, since I like this method of deciding what to read. I hope to get some reviews up, soon; there are several books that I have been MEANING to review but haven't. It's so hard to make reviews when I like the book--I never know what to say other than "It was great! You should read it!" My reviews are only ever long and in-depth when I didn't like something, and this is a positive blog space, so I only post good reviews!


The covers for this entire series just make me salivate. As a writer of steampunk (fantasy, not historical, though, but whatever) and an aspiring PUBLISHED author, they make me SOOO jealous. I'd jump out my window for covers this great. (Dear future publisher, when designing my cover art, please consider the above covers as guidelines for what I like and want.) Blameless is my favorite.

Hm... maybe I should do a post about my favorite book covers. Just for future reference, you understand ;)

Re-post: help me pick what to read, vote in my poll!

This is really silly, but I can't decide what to read. You guys pick for me! :)

What should I read next?

What should I read next?

So... I have 43 books sitting here that I haven't read. I cannot, for the life of me, choose which one to read next. Ergo I am asking all of you to help me pick. I've narrowed it down (somehow) to nine. Vote, and I'll read whatever wins!

If you haven't heard of some of these books, here are links to all of them on Goodreads, so you can make an informed decision ;)

Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter
White Cat
The Summer King
Dead as a Doornail
The Name of the Wind
Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Lamentation
Soulless
Scar Night

If you feel very strongly for or against one of these books, tell me in a comment! :) It might get you an extra vote or two.

What should I read next?

Seriously?

It is never a good idea to take oneself too seriously. I believe it brings on all sorts of health problems. You know, like hair-loss, clogged arteries, ulcers, tanorexia, turning into a Prawn (anyone seen District 9?), that sort of thing. I like to have a laugh at my own expense at least once a day. My cat has a laugh at my expense just about every hour I'm home. And then she gets confused and thinks my toes are her kitty treats and tries to eat them.

This is also a philosophy I try to apply to my writing. I look at it, every so often, through the lens of the ridiculous. The fun-house mirror, if you will. Except reading text in a mirror is a little awkward. It makes me go cross-eyed. But I believe that a book that takes itself too seriously will become the most ridiculous thing--and a sort of ridiculous that the author has lost control of.

I would much rather you're laughing with me than laughing at me. Though I'd much rather you be laughing at me than, say, egging my house or my car (which has happened to me! Let me tell you, it was in the summer, and I didn't go out to my car until midday--so I had FRIED egg all over my car. That car is now, unfortunately, deceased in a car wreck that was not my fault. RIP.)

So I look at my manuscript and I laugh that I pulled all of this stuff out of my brain (I mean really, there MUST be something wrong up there...), and then I insert comic relief. I like comic relief characters. I also like dialogue lines that point out how ridiculous everything is. There are a few of those in my stuff--always will be. Because isn't that how life is? You've had a day that was SO bad, it was funny that that much bad stuff happened to you on one day? That happens to me weekly. At least I get a laugh out of it. And it becomes fodder for my manuscripts. Or it would, if I could ever be pried away from my fantasy worlds and write a story applicable to real people.

Now, please excuse me. My cat has just commandeered my left hand. She thinks it's dinner. I must open up negotiations for its return.