Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Week Away Now...

One week away from Spring Break - yes!!! I have good reasons to be excited: more time to write (like editing Sea of Benevolence), more time to sleep in, and more time to...study for SATs and SAT subject tests. How exciting. On the plus side, one of the two subject tests I'm taking is Literature, something I really love. The other is World History, which is pretty interesting too. I just have to make 100 flash cards, probably.

As usual, I'm excited on the JAL front: merchandise is finally available: a cap, band T-shirt, signed posters (yeah right, my parents are going to actually let me get one of those), signed folders (if I got one, I'd never use it because my folders tend to rip - if they're paper- or snap - if they're plastic), and a signed mug. That, I might actually be allowed to get. If not, I'll have to wait another eight months till my birthday before my parents let me make my own decisions) And of course, I can't let anyone else use it because it might break like the last mug I got - and nobody bothered to tell me it broke. 

And...finally, back to writing. I know I haven't blogged in a while - my fault, I'll admit it - but I've been doing a lot of writing, mostly revisions to The Peasant Princess. For once in my life, I'm actually satisfied with my own writing (I'm a perfectionist, I get it from my Dad, unfortunately), thanks to Lyuba Velcheva, assistant to Alyssa Henkin at Trident Media Group. Constructive criticism is always welcome, although it takes me a couple of minutes to absorb it in. 



Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Writing, Writing, Writing...



    Whoa, those are some huge pics. Not that I'm complaining - the bigger the better, in my opinion! Finally, I've finished the first draft of True or False?  Ahead of time, by the way, which is good. I've already done some edits and just have to finish them, also of course I also have to somehow contact the band and obtain permission before they sue me for copyright violation. Infringement of personal right to live or something like that, probably. I don't blame them.
 I also finished the first draft of Sea of Benevolence, but I feel a need to add onto it because it's significantly shorter than its two prequels. So I intend to do as much as I can with that until the summer, when I'll resume work on the sequel and last of the series, Secret Danger (whose working title I intend to change to Hidden Danger). Besides, I've only written about four and a quarter pages for it so far. Might as well wait a little longer...
 And after that I'll hopefully be able to work on a novel for my senior year research project, probably that vampire novel. I can research different myths and legends, how vampires have changed over the years, look into vampires of different nationalities, and I also intend to analyze four vampire novels, two older and two contemporary and find similarities and differences before I start my own. And just to get this over with, no, I do not believe in vampires, not in the least. I think they'd be interesting to write about (as long as I don't make them perfect, because perfect=boring for me personally). And yes, the vampire in the book is going to be a carnivore, and his name is not Edward Cullen; it's Fletcher Munroe (no, he's not related to President James Munroe - the guy responsible for the Munroe Doctrine). And he's not pale, mostly because I personally am not attracted to pallid people and partially because I've done some research and in the past people used to believe that a corpse had turned into a vampire when it looked healthier than it had in life (meaning, less pale and with healthier color). He's also not a mind-reader or anything special like that - he's just particularly skilled at archery due to centuries of practice, hence the name Fletcher.
 And again after that, I plan to work on another novel I've wanted to work on for quite some time: Heavensent. It's not a religious novel, although it will deal with the ideas of Heaven vs. Hell and Angels vs. Devilfolk. It will require extensive research (like in the Qur'an, Bible, and Torah - just the sections considering angels, devils, heaven, and hell), but it's something I want to do on my own time, as the subject is very special to me. Mostly because it was inspired by a Jal song. I don't think that's a copyright issue - it's just basically one line that happened to inspire an entire plot. If I hadn't mentioned that it was inspired by a song, it's likely no one would know. Although if you know me really well, you might be able to guess.
 Yes, I know, I plan out when I'm going to do each novel. I have to, that way I know what I'm working on now and what I'm working on later, and all my ideas get done. So far I'm set through college. There are other ideas I have, of course, but I feel like those are for more of an adult audience and it would help to grow up a little bit and gain some experience. In terms of YA, well, I am a Young Adult. There's my experience right there.