Sea of Benevolence

The plot, in the beginning of Sea of Benevolence, revolves around the protagonist, Coralie "Cora" Parker, trying to figure out how to get Kyle Grimalkin to admit that he might have feelings for her. Sounds like every other YA novel, right? Close, but not quite. Kyle's a shape-shifter, and if that didn't make things complicated enough, he's had major commitment issues ever since his family abandoned him when he was eight years old. So he doesn't exactly believe in love. That's a problem. 

One thing I can say, I have to work hard to keep Cora from becoming like those girls at school who are constantly drooling over Edward Cullen - I'm not a big fan of obsession of fictional characters. Or of any person, come to think of it. At least now I kind of understand the obsession (due to my fixation with Jal the band), but at least I know the guys in the band actually exist, unlike a certain golden-eyed vampire... Plus, if I'm obsessed with anything, it's the music, not the guys' eyes or their hair or whatever it is that makes girls obsessed with EC. 

Spring Break!

Finally, it's here! Although I feel like I need a whole month, not just a week. Still, that's what summer is for. 

Okay, let's see what's on the agenda...

Sea of Benevolence revisions, okay.

New short story, working on it.

Somehow contact Jal the band, hmm...

Oh, and college essays. Nice. 

Got a lot of work to do now, so I'll come back to this later. 

Ciao!

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. 

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. 

Watch What You Say...

I doubt that this is just something I do. Your brain thinks one thing, your mouth says another. The only problem is that I seem to do this kind of thing more than most people. Take today for example. My cat, Picard, got into my mother's room, so she tells me to get him out so he won't shed hair all over her stuff. So I open my mouth to call Picard, and I end up shutting my mouth halfway through Farhan's name, which my mother notices. I know how that happened - before going up to see Mom I'd been working on True or False?, specifically a chapter in Farhan's POV. I could have just as easily ended up calling my cat Goher or Shazi, but of course that's not the most reassuring thing to tell my mother, who now thinks I'm crazily obsessed.

On another note, I'm doing my best to finish the first draft of True or False? by the end of this week. Let's hope I can do it...

Dreams

Dreams can always be a source of inspiration to authors. I got the idea for True or False? from a dream, and so far it's been going pretty well, although I don't know why Jal the band still keeps showing up in my dreams. Not that I'm complaining - the dreams have always been pleasant, except for one that made me cry in the morning when I woke up... Anyway, last night I had yet another dream involving Farhan, Goher, and Shazi. And no, it was not something to inspire another novel. Calm down, I'm getting to the point. In the dream, everyone in my family was sitting at home doing...nothing, from what I could tell, when the doorbell rang. My Dad, who was near the door, didn't answer it for some reason and went up to his room, maybe because he didn't want to be seen in his pajamas. I don't know why, but I was pretty excited and glad that I got to open the door myself, and I saw first Farhan, then Goher, and then Shazi. Don't know how I'd been expecting them, but I pretended that I hadn't and invited them in, making sure they sat down in our living room first before they could tell me what they were doing there. And then I don't remember what the rest of the dream was about. That's the unfortunate thing - I can never seem to remember the whole of my dreams, only little bits and pieces. Their car probably broke down just outside the house or something. Or maybe they needed directions, but I know that Goher has an iPhone so I would think that he'd be able to use the maps function for that...unless it ran out of battery. I don't know, but I can use some aspects of the dream in True or False? - like...never mind, I can't, because I really don't remember much other than opening the door, seeing them all in sunglasses (in February? Well, I use transition glasses that annoy me beyond all reason but always look like sunglasses as long as the sun is out. I don't know what their excuse is...), and inviting them in. Did I mention that it was snowing in my dream? 

Almost There...

I have about a third of True or False? left to write, then some time - hopefully not much more than a month - for editing. In terms of editing, there are some details I need to go back and add, some stuff that need cutting out, and the typical grammar and spelling errors. I also need to go back and add some chapters in Goher's point of view (in the unnecessarily large screenshot, he's the one on the left - and the guitarist of the band. He's also on the left in the smaller screenshot.) for one of the subplots of the novel that I later decided needed to be expanded on. There's also a chapter that requires some historical research done, so that will take a couple of days - I'm grateful for the Internet - and one chapter in Farhan's point of view that I got so stuck on that I had to skip it and go on to the next chapter. Let me point out that it is not easy to write a novel where your characters are real people - I might have to end up following Farhan around for a day before I can get that chapter right, or I might just need to watch a couple of interviews, depending on how it gets. In terms of stuff I need to cut out, there are some parts that are just...well, silly. But I like to make people laugh, so there are going to be parts that are a bit silly, but I want to cut anything out that just seems downright ridiculous. Usually anything like that was written after midnight. For some reason I always write a lot after midnight, but that's also when my brain tends to stop working properly, so what I write might not always make sense. Once I'm done with the manuscript and all the editing, I'll do what I can to see about copyright issues. Maybe the Law of Attraction can help me somehow pull the band to my front door with my mind...