Reading List

1) LORD OF THE RINGS (book 1). Finished. After three years.

I loved it, once I got into it. Tolkein is tricky, but once you give in to the way he describes each tree with TLC, it's easy to get through his prose. Aragorn is, as always, a heartthrob. Gandalf is a badass, and Frodo is just cute. Very stoked to read the next two, though I highly suspect that, just like the movies, the first one will remain my favorite.

Best Quote: YOU SHALL NOT PASS (ok, so there are other ones, but that's the most fun to shout out at random moments).

2) SHIVER. In Progress. For serious.

Took me two chapters to truly get into this, but now I'm in love. Sam and Grace are wonderful, and their relationship so far is subtle, but ridiculously strong. Beautiful writing. Can't wait to see what happens. Yes, this book is about werewolves. It's also made of awesome.

3) WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES. In Progress. For three years now.

More of a scholarly study than anything, this book goes through myths and stories and analyzes them from a feminist perspective. What do women lose with the gender stereotypes modern society has enforced? What do we gain? It's both interesting and boring (though I hate to admit it), so it's hard to get through. I'll have a five hour flight to Puerto Rico coming up though, so I'm sure I'll have a bit of time to sink my teeth into it.

4) GOOD OMENS. In Progress. Slightly for serious. But it's been like, six months.

My second book by Neil Gaiman, I'm not surprised the way this is going. When I read NEVERWHERE, I ended up putting it down somewhere in the middle of the story. When I picked it up again, I sailed through the rest. Gaiman is an amazing writer, and I recommend any of his books. I've also read CORALINE. It, too, is awesome. Can't wait to read the rest of GOOD OMENS.

**

Alright, that's the entirety of my official summer reading list. I did want to read Richelle Mead's SUCCUBUS BLUES (and the rest of that series), but as of yet I can't find it in Texas. I might just wait till I get back to Evanston. Any recommendations? What's on YOUR summer reading list?

My Horcruxes... because my HP obsession has reached new levels

Before anything else happens, BEHOLD. BEHOLD THE AMAZING AWESOMENESS:




OMG ISN'T IT AMAZING?!?!?!?!??!!!?!?!?

Feel free to pause, because if you've reacted half as crazily as I have, then you're still hyperventilating from the AWESOMENESS OVERLOAD!

Ok. Are you good?

Me too.

Let's continue.

In the spirit of my absolute favorite book series EVER (no, seriously, nothing will ever eclipse my love for HP. Haha. See what I did there with the Twilight reference?), I'm going to copy this youtube video. However, since me plus cameras usually equal disaster, I'm just going to blog about it instead.

If I were to create seven horcruxes by putting bits of my soul into material objects (like Voldemort does in the Harry Potter series), here's what they would be:

1) My guitar. Not the first one from my dad, but the one my music teacher gave me. It's a little beaten up, but it's lovely, and even though I don't play seriously anymore, I'd feel lost if I didn't have a guitar nearby. It's very important to me to be able to have that, and especially that particular guitar. I even named it. No, I'm not going to tell you its name.

2) My first Harry Potter Book. Granted, it is seriously messed up right now, but I truly believe I wouldn't be who I am today without HP. There's scotch tape holding it together, and ridiculous 11-year-old doodles inside, but I love it. Dearly.

3) This Ring:



I've had it for almost a year, and other than the fact that it's absolutely beautiful, one of my best friends got it for me for my birthday. Also, it's peridot, my birthstone. So that's pretty damn cool as well.

4) Guitar pendant and/or hand of god charm. They both go on necklace style, and they both mean a lot to me. The guitar pendent was my great grandmother's (on my dad's side) and the hand of god I got at the synagogue when I used to student teach there. I don't feel safe or normal without one of those around my neck.

5) A lump of peridot on the green sand beach in Hawaii. Favorite place. On earth. No doubt.

6) My cat. I know, she's alive, but as evidenced by the 7th HP book (spoiler, mos def), I can do that. I love my baby kitten, because she's made of awesome and she's got spunk. Spunk is good. Especially for horcruxes.

7) Red scarf I got in Israel. It's shiny, and I love it. God, that sounds like a terrible reason. I bought it in the beduin tents on my last night in Israel, and every time I wear it I think of the amazing time I had there.

**

WOW. This turned out to be WAY more difficult then I thought it would be. Not that I'm not materialistic. I assure you, I am, but Voldemort had his work cut out for him when he had to decide which objects to put his soul into. If I had to do that, the Order of the Phoenix would probably catch me while I was trying to decide.

Do I sound like a nerd?

I sound like a nerd.

Ok, your turn. If you had to make horcruxes, what would you put your soul into? Because immortality has crossed everyone's mind, I'm sure, and it never hurts to be prepared.

:)

Going through the motions (Or, the power of imagination)

Today's blog post is inspired by guns.

You read it right. Guns, people.

Not that I'm a supporter of guns, or anything. They can be quite cool, but that's not the point of this post.

I've never held a gun before, but I can imagine what it's like to hold one, my index finger tense and ready to pull back at a moment's notice.

Ok, so I don't know that much about guns, except a few amateur moves on how to disarm an assailant pointing a gun at my face or back. One of the fun things about being a writer is you can imagine things like holding a gun, aiming it at a bad guy, or disarming someone pointing one at you. The best part is you don't have to ever hold a gun or have one aimed at you.

However.

It's probably easier to write about it if you've done it. Sure, you can imagine the mountains of Scotland, but if you've actually been there, the picture won't be quite so hard to conjure up. You can imagine holding a gun, palms sweaty and nerves going nuts, but the feeling is more vivid if you've experienced it.

Case in point: One of my writing teachers mentioned that sometimes, she enlists a colleague's help to enact an action scene. She needed to know what it felt like to throw a punch, where it would land, what might happen, etc. A lot of people have problems writing action scenes, because the majority of action people have seen is from DIE HARD or BUFFY. I happen to have it a bit easier, because I'm involved in a few different martial arts. Contrary to the belief of most people who've seen MI2, if you throw one solid punch at someone's temple, or an uppercut to their chin, they will go out like a light. No ten minute long fight scenes. It usually takes less than three.

Handy to know when writing an action scene, no?

I'm sure the dimensions change when the person being hit has superhuman healing powers (like werewolves), but it's nice to have a baseline.

It's harder for me to write about, say, a biochemist, because I have no experience in that subject. Also, it's difficult to imagine a character who knows guns very well, because I dunno jack shit about it. Which is why I'm going to shoot off a few rounds (that's what he said) before I leave Texas. Everyone has guns here. Really.

So I guess the moral of this story is don't be afraid to write to your strengths. The runner up moral of the story is do your research. The saying "write what you know" is vastly misinterpreted, because the power of the imagination is often taken for granted, even by those who work theirs to the grind every day.

What experiences or talents do you have that make certain topics easier to write about?

Because a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

Visual inspiration for a tentative WIP. We'll see where it goes. As a fun little experiment, you should let me know what you think the book is about in the comment section (unless your name is Katie Spanish Dessert and I already told you the basics...)









My Main Character (she's made of awesome... I think):








Listen to Nine Inch Nails. Do it. Now.

Spilling Ink... ?

Yeah, I started out strong, but eventually this whole blogging thing died. Caput, and all that jazz. See, Texas was once a place of lame internet access, until I realized that dad has a wifi plug in. He's been holding out on me.

Punk.

Anyways, now I have ze internet at my fingertips, but I'm fairly sure the Spilling Ink challenge has turned out to be a monumental failure for me. Kudos to those who stuck with it.

Oh, speaking of challenges, I also failed that whole "4k a day" thing. Was it 4k? Or 3k? 2k?

Dunno. Haven't written that much, except for the past two days, whilst a shiny new idea distracted me from reality. I'm a bit hesitant to work on shiny new idea, because even though it sounds super cool, I don't like research. This totally needs research.

Shiny new idea will probably continue to distract me until I've written enough of it out (which might be 20 pages or a book), but if I write enough scenes (20 pages or 10k words) I'll suck it up and write the rest of it. Because it's the most promising idea I have to go on.

Arg. Maybe tomorrow I'll write about the evil difficult ridiculosity about writing a second book.

Yes.

Goodnight, peeps.

Spilling Ink, Day 19: Visual inspiration

Steph Bowe, a 16 year old author, posted today about visual inspiration. Her post is interesting, and inspired mine today. It's all about M-Town, by the way.

All of the pictures pertain to my book, and after an extensive online search, I think I found the right ones to post. Next week sometime I'll do one of these on SW, my new WIP that isn't so much IP.

I know this is Outback Steakhouse, but it looks so much like the restaurant where many fateful conversations occur:




















That's all, folks. Do you find pictures for your books or stories?

Spilling Ink: Day 16, 17, & 18 (Or: Oops, K kinda sucks at this whole challenge thing)

Yeah. I know it's been three days. Yeah. I know I'm supposed to blog every day. Yeah. I know I suck.

Today I'm going to have lunch with one of my high school teachers, and I'm really excited. I'm also aware that this is apparently weird, but I don't care. She was the first encouraging voice (besides my mother) to tell me writing was a subject worth pursuing. I was a member of her first class after college. Junior year English. Amazing. It was back when I still cared about grades, and I'll always remember the day she broke it to me that my final grade for fall semester was an A-.

Good times.

This blog post, therefore, is dedicated to all the amazing teachers I've had, in high school and college: Sucich, Abani, Savage, Kinzie, Bouldrey, Morawski, Olson. I owe my love for English to you fine professors, and I hope you share your enthusiasm with hundreds (thousands) of students in your thus far AMAZING careers.

Peace out,
(Good blog post upcoming),
-K