Cheyenne's final challenge of Haunted Week is to review a scary book. The first one that came to mind was:
IT was a long time ago. I must have been a teenager, rapidly working my way through all Stephen King's books when I discovered this one.
"They were just kids when they stumbled upon the horror within their hometown. Now, as adults, none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them all back to Derry, Maine, to face the nightmare without end, and the evil without a name..."
I never really liked clowns as a child. Even less so now I know they are really shape-shifters that feed off your deepest fears....
The epitaph: The inscription on a tombstone - you could say it's a person's last words. What is the greatest last line of any book you've ever read?
Here are five to get you started:
"He is coming, and I am here." ~ The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both." ~ Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
"As I left China farther and farther behind, I looked out of the window and saw a great universe beyond the plane's silver wing. I took one more glance over my past life, then turned to the future. I was eager to embrace the world." ~ Wild Swans by Jung Chang
...and one for Halloween: "He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance." ~ Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Some books aren't at all what you expected—which can be good or bad. Today's challenge is to think of some books you read that were either a 'trick' or a 'treat'.
The book I am currently reading is a real 'treat' - The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory. I must admit I used to avoid historical fiction, preferring well researched history - until I had a go a writing a novel set in 10th century Wales. There will always be huge gaps in the accepted accounts, and the story of King Henry's first wife Katherine is a great example. Phillipa Gregory uses italics for Katherine's personal reflections on events and really makes you think what it must have been like to live in Tudor times.
I struggle to recall any books I've read recently I would describe as a 'trick' - if you can think of any let's hear about them!
Cheyenne has set a great challenge today - she says you never know what's going to creep onto the web. Sometimes, however, you get a pleasant surprise. Today I will link to five amazing book (and writing) blogs I've found:
1. {This Girl Reads}Yes it's Cheyenne's blog, which she started because she adores talking about the books she loves. Innovative, insightful, inspiring and informative - what more could you ask?
2. The Book Designer Joel Friedlander can always be relied on for something new and says “Writers change the world one reader at a time. But you can’t change the world with a book that’s still on your hard drive or in a box under your bed.”
3. GRRM if you only have time to look at one of these links, check out George R. R. Martin's site. I have heard it called the worst author site ever (I don't agree) and it is my guilty pleasure to keep an eye on George when I am supposed to be writing.
4. BOOKTRIBdescribed as the 'all you can eat literary buffet' you never know whet you are going to find here but there is a lively blend of stuff about books, writers, and readers so well worth a visit.
5. The Book SmugglersThea and Ana smuggle books home to add to a teetering pile that they devour in secret - or would do if it weren't for the fact that they keep mentioning them on this blog!
What are your amazing book or writing website discoveries?
Cheyenne's challenge for today is to dig up your past and bring some of your old friends back to life. I've decided to go back to my earliest memories:
I wonder if so much exposure to the many film and TV versions of the Alice story (see this list of sixteen Alice in Wonderland films on IMDb) allow new readers to approach this book as I did as a child? I haven't read it for years, but somewhere I have a copy with the original Victorian illustrations by John Tenniel, which left a lasting memory. Tenniel's black and white line drawings were painstakingly engraved on blocks of wood and can be seen here.
Peter Pan has also been 'interpreted' so many times - it must be hard for children not to envisage the Disney characters. My copy was a present for my fifth birthday (there is an inscription inside the cover from my parents) and is the version with the colour plate illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell (who also illustrated a version of Alice in Wonderland). It is the book I have owned for the longest time and still sits on my bookshelf. Interestingly, J.M. Barrie didn't say very much about Peter Pan's appearance, leaving it to the reader's imagination.
A theme is emerging here - when I think of Treasure Island I picture the excellent recent UK adaptation starring Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver. There is a great list of the many film versions here. Writers may be interested to note that Jim Hawkins narrates all but three chapters from first and third-person perspectives. Dr. Livesey narrates the rest and while Jim describes his feelings as the story unfolds, Dr. Livesey is more objective and really quite factual. My cherished copy of treasure Island was handed down to my brother and sisters, so has long since gone - but the memory of the first time I read it lives on.
What old friends would you like brought back to life?
Cheyenne's challenge today is everyone has a few skeletons in their closet - AND a few on their bookshelves, too, so it's time to consider books you've owned for a long time but never read.
I moved house last summer after 25 years and found that nearly half of my boxes would be needed for books. It was time to take a really hard look at why I needed so many books. I sorted them into those I would never want to be parted from and the ones I would probably never read again. Interestingly there were hardly any I'd never read, as I would happily read the back of the cornflakes packet if there was nothing else.
The hard bit was packing them all carefully into a box to take to my local charity shop. There is something strange about giving books away. Although it's good to think someone else will enjoy them - and they may make some money for a good cause, there is still a sense of loss and the concern that you may actually need them after all.
Of course, as soon as we moved to the new house we started missing some of the books I donated - but there is no spare space in our bookshelves already, so it was definitely necessary!
Cheyenne's theme today is even the biggest book enthusiasts have some bats in their belfries about things in books that drive them insane. Three things about books that drive me bats include historical fiction that reinforces historical misconceptions, huge holes in the plot solved by amazing coincidences - and cover blurb that is more fictional than the contents! Here is a really nice acoustic version of Thriller by the wonderful Emily Elbert:
Samhain… the Feast of the Dead, also known as Halloween, the ancient time of the Celtic New Year when
spirits of the long dead converse. Do not be afraid. Death is not to be feared. Samhain is our time
to reflect on friends we have lost… and changes in our lives. Take stock of the
past and come to terms with it. Move on. Look forward to the future.
The night glows red from huge sacred bonfires and Celtic warriors with
costumes of animal heads and skins drink deep from the mystical chalice and foretell
each other's futures. Before the Samhain
embers die new fires are lit in homes from the sacred bonfire. Protection from evil and precious warmth through
the long cold Celtic winter.
I know Dr. Suzannah Lipscombe for
her unmissable television appearances, where she gently challenges preconceived
ideas and really makes you think about how people lived. It was therefore with high expectations that
I started reading her new book, ‘A Visitors Companion to Tudor England’. With an interesting format of fifty carefully
selected locations across the UK, Suzannah highlights their contribution
to our understanding of Tudor times.
The descriptions of the Tudor sites
are sprinkled through with many often gruesome details of the time, several of
which had previously escaped my notice. For example, I am currently reading ‘The
Constant Princess’ (Philippa Gregory’s novel about the early life of
Katherine of Aragon). In the fictional account, the Countess of Salisbury, Margaret
Pole is calm and regal – but Suzannah brings her description of Tower Green to
life with an account of how the unfortunate Margaret was ‘chased by her
executioner, a wretched and blundering youth… who literally hacked her head and
shoulders to pieces in the most pitiful manner.’
An example of how this book
provokes further enquiry is that I was inspired to fulfil a long ambition and recently
visited Hampton Court Palace. I took a photograph of the picture of The Family ofHenry VIII in the corridor
outside the Chapel Royal:
In the picture, Henry is flanked by Jane Seymour and his son Edward, but Suzannah points out that Jane died two weeks after Prince Edward’s birth. I was intrigued by the suggestion
that the woman to the far left of the picture is of a female fool called
Jane. This led me to John
Southworth’s book which explains that ‘Jane the Fool’ was ‘the type of fool
known as an “innocent” and wore beautiful gowns but the hose and shoes of a
clown - and had her head shaved
regularly at fourpence a time’.
Some details from Suzannah’s visits are poignant, such as seeing that
someone had laid pomegranates and fresh flowers at the tomb of Katherine of
Aragon at Peterborough Cathedral.
Others, such as the terrible events at Glastonbury Tor and the
desecration of Fountains Abbey make you think again about the wider
implications of the dissolution of the monasteries. One of my favourites is the aside that the Tudor
Queen Elizabeth enjoyed the sport of bear baiting, with dogs. I’ll spare the
details but it does help to underline the importance of appreciating the
cultural values of the period – and how much we can still learn by visiting the
Tudor sites that remain.
I fell into writing by accident, at an urging of a
friend. On a sunny May day, after closing one of my biggest social
media consultancy clients, I was biking home and saw him on the
street. "Hey! What are you up?" He asked. "I don't know," I
said, "will go look for the next client, I guess." "How about
you finish your book finally?" he said. I pedaled home and thirty minutes
later decided, why not, indeed. If not now, I'll probably never work up the courage
to try it. This is the short story. The long story is, I've wanted to write a book for
years and most of my friends knew it. They also knew that I started on a novel,
got stuck, abandoned the effort. Started again, abandoned again. Then did it
again the third time. Why? Oh, the reasons were very simple. It couldn't be any
good, no way. I'm not a writer, never studied it in school. How dare I write in
English, it's not even my first language! Who do I think I am trying to finish
a whole novel without practicing first on short stories like normal people do?
And so I thought, all right, to hell with all these doubts. I'll give it
another try.
5 months later, I'm in middle of Draft 4, and this time
it's happening all the way (planning to finish and publish it at the end of
2012). The biggest lesson I had learned was - trusting the process. Writing a
novel is like making good wine. Everything takes bloody time. Picking the
grapes takes time, mashing them into juice takes time, and then the whole
fermenting takes forever! You can't just walk up to a barrel and shout and yell
and make it ferment faster. It takes as long as it takes, not slower, not
faster.
The same goes with your first book - without
previous experience it's hard to trust the process, hard not to freak out and
think that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, I will not know what to write about. But I
will, it will come to me. I'm very impatient and the hardest part for me was
(still is) knowing that it's ok to take one hour to come up with a perfect
sentence. The important part is, every day I have to keep moving forward. And
if I do, it will happen.
Now, about the story and why I got so mesmerized
with the idea.
SIREN SUICIDES is
my first novel. It's a young adult urban fantasy set in Seattle about a teenage
girl who lost her mother, hates her father, and decides to escape reality via
suicide. Her name is Ailen Bright, and she is a dreamer and a believer in all
things magic. She gobbles up stories that her friend Hunter feeds her while
they hang out in the bathroom, stoned out of their minds, because the bathroom
is the only room in Ailen's house that locks and has a window. Ailen is
mesmerized by water, it calms her down, so she decides to go by way of
drowning, because, she says, "I have to be calm to pull the plug on my
life".
Instead, she turns into a siren, finds out that her
friend is a siren hunter, and dives into an adventure akin to Alice in
Wonderland, except it's all things water, rain, songs, and magic that's both
dark and fantastic, like stories that I used to conjure up in my head. I plan
on finishing the novel by the end of 2012.
Here is a little excerpt (please bear in mind, this
is not the final draft yet!):
I choose to die in the bathroom because it’s the
only room in the house that locks. Besides, water calms me down, and I have to
be calm to pull the plug on my life. Nothing would irritate Daddy more than
finding a fully clothed corpse of his sixteen year old daughter on the morning
of her birthday, floating in his beloved antique claw foot cast iron tub held
up by four enamelled sirens, ruled by the Siren of Canosa, or, in plain
bathroom fixture speak, the bronze goose-neck faucet. How fitting. Ailen
Bright, the deceased, to be guided into the after-life by a tap.
It’s not only my birthday today. Today marks six
years since Mommy jumped off the Aurora bridge, on that rainy morning on
September 9th of 2008. I’m tired of the pain, and it’s all
Daddy’s fault. I want to hurt him the only way I can.
Ksenia Anske is a writer at heart and a social media marketer by trade, with a passion for speaking. Her first start-up was Lilipip, a company that created animated explanation videos. She currently helps clients establish their social media presence via her consultancy Plumagram and works on her 1st novel, a young adult urban fantasy set in Seattle.
This latest novel by Francine LaSala is a fast-paced, richly layered, and darkly humorous satire filled with quirky characters and unforgettable moments of humanity.
Mina Clark is losing her mind—or maybe it’s already gone. She isn’t quite sure. Feeling displaced in her over-priced McMansion-dotted suburban world, she is grappling not only with deep debt, a mostly absent husband, and her playground-terroriser 3-year old Emma, but also with a significant amnesia she can’t shake - a “temporary” condition now going on several years, brought on by a traumatic event she cannot remember, and which everyone around her feels is best forgotten.
When a trip to the dentist leaves Mina with a new gold crown, her whole life changes. Slowly her memory and her mojo return. But when everything begins to crash down around her, she's not sure if what's happening is real, of if she's just now fully losing her mind... especially when she realizes the only person she can trust is the one she fears the most. What’s it all going to cost her in the end?
Francine LaSala has authored and collaborated over thirty works of nonfiction and edited numerous best-selling novels through her company, Francine LaSala Productions. She lives in New York with her husband and two daughters. Visit Francine online at www.francinelasala.com and follow her on twitter.
Beneath the dark streets of London they played a dangerous game with trains. Now it is their only chance for survival...
Mega Britain in 2075 is a dangerous place. A man known only as the Governor rules the country with an iron hand, but within the towering perimeter walls of London Greater Urban Area anarchy spreads unchecked through the streets.
In the abandoned London Underground station of St. Cannerwells, a group of misfits calling themselves the Tube Riders seek to forget the chaos by playing a dangerous game with trains. Marta is their leader, a girl haunted by her brother's disappearance. Of the others, Paul lives only to protect his little brother Owen, while Simon is trying to hold on to his relationship with Jess, daughter of a government official. Guarding them all is Switch, a man with a flickering eye and a faster knife, who cares only about preserving the legacy of the Tube Riders. Together, they are family.
Everything changes the day they are attacked by a rival gang. While escaping, they witness an event that could bring war down on Mega Britain. Suddenly they are fleeing for their lives, pursued not only by their rivals, but by the brutal Department of Civil Affairs, government killing machines known as Huntsmen, and finally by the inhuman Governor himself.
The Tube Riders is part one of a trilogy. Part two, The Tube Riders : Exile, is scheduled for publication in summer 2013.
I love
writing fantasy because it gives me the freedom to make the rules. As a reader, however, fantasy works best for
me when I can easily relate to what unfolds on the page. As an author, then, I like to craft my worlds
with what I call the –ish. For example,
in Tournament of Chance, the world is
Earth-ish, and the era is Medieval-ish.
My historical accuracy is relaxed and fun, with a cinematic view toward
composition.
Tournament
of Chance began its life as a short story of about
8,000 words. At that time, I was looking
to place stories in magazines as a way to get some credits. To keep the length manageable, I concluded
the narrative a few scenes past the actual archery tournament itself. One might
say, I cut it off just when the story became the most interesting! Despite good feedback, I was unable to find a
home for the short story. I put it aside
for a while to work on other projects.
Eventually, I brought it out and started nibbling away at a full-length
novel.
Unlike other more disciplined writers, I
don’t plot. That’s not to say I careen
down a dark alley like a drooling, blind zombie, but admit I often don’t know
what’s going to happen next. This sort
of work ethic doesn’t serve well on a deadline, but it can be a great deal of
fun if you can trust yourself to pull a rabbit out of a hat. In Tournament,
I did not plan to write about
shape-shifters, time travel, trolls or fairies, but write about them I did.
It’s just a guess, but I suspect this
method of writing stems from my improvisation work in my acting days. The teacher would put two or more of us on
stage, give us a setting and an intention, and let the action play out. Over time, I learned what worked, what was
boring, and what was funny.
The late actor/dancer Gregory Hines used
“tap improvography” when he was filming some of his dance scenes in the movie White Nights (1985) (see film clip
HERE). In other words, he made it up as he went along… and it works. Perhaps
what I do can be called “write improvography.”
Hopefully, it has the right stuff.
~ S.G. Rogers
In
Tournament
of Chance, a hunter’s daughter
becomes the spark that ignites a revolution—in time.
When
a beautiful commoner enters the Tournament of Chance archery competition, her
thwarted victory sparks a revolution in the oppressive kingdom of Destiny.
Although Heather never believed the legends about the restoration of Ormaria,
after three shape-shifting Ormarian wizards awaken from a long magical slumber,
she joins their perilous quest to regain the throne. Heather battles vicious
predators and angry trolls to free the wizards’ magic, but at a horrendous
cost. She is unexpectedly torn from the arms of the man she loves and hurled
back in time to fulfill a prophecy not yet written. The ensuing maelstrom tests
Heather’s survival skills, wits, and endurance. Will she become an unwritten
footnote in history, or can she trust the magic to lead her back to her one
true love?
Available in all e-formats from Musa
Publishing HERE.
Also available at Amazon
for the Kindle. Coming soon to BN.com and wherever fine e-books are sold.
Originally
from Southern California, S.G. Rogers has lived in Asheville, North Carolina
and Laurel, Mississippi. She earned her first black belt in taekwondo from
martial arts champion Billy Blanks. Later on, she earned black belts in
taekwondo and hapkido from Master Myung Kim. Currently residing in beautiful
Savannah, Georgia, S.G. Rogers writes fantasy and romantic fantasy stories.
She’s owned by two hairless cats, Houdini and Nikita, and lives on an island
populated by exotic birds, deer and the occasional gator. Although she’s most
often drawn to speculative fiction, she’s been known to break away to write
other genres. Tab is her beverage of choice, but when she imbibes, a
cranberry vodka martini doesn’t go amiss.
