OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok. So I'm still trying to grasp this... but Darkest Ebony got self published.
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGHOWOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGURGLEFLURGLE*FLAILS*
*restrains self*
Yep. My birthday is on monday, so my parents had it self published for me. I have a copy of my book sitting right in front of me and I can't stop picking it up and messing with it. It's super surreal.

See that?

That's my book.

In print.

*screams and pulls hair out*

I'm probably sending mixed signals. Am I happy or upset or whatever. The truth is, I'm kind of numb. Like, totally in shock. Like seeing your own grave or something. I really wanted to get it picked up by a real publishing company and go through all that, and self-publishing is a pretty good way to see that you don't get published unless your book does phenomenally well. However, I'm thrilled at the same time. It's absolutely insane to see your book in print sitting next to you.

Yeah, that's DE sitting on my bookshelf. Right next to City of Bones. EEEEP.

Oh, and you might notice that I've actually got relevant pictures on my stuff up. What's up with that?

Well, because I got a camera too. Awesome, isnt it?

And the good news is I know how to work this one. So I'll (hopefully) be putting pictures up more often. You know, pictures I didn't find on the net.

And so, because I'm trying to keep my mind off the fact that my 'natural market' for publishing is hosed and the fact that I'm actually a published author (daunting 0-0) I'm going to put up some random pictures I took today.

This is my dog Bella looking confused.

Actually, I just shouted "Hungry" (her trigger word meaning "I'm going to feed you now.")

She looked right at the camera though. Hehe. I feel mean, but she's sleeping now.

And here's Bella making a dumb face. She does that a lot.

Here's a picture of my bookshelf. I'm going to have to get another one soon.

And here's my quote (famous around my house ;) Writers are dreamers with eyes open.

My mom decided my wall needed redecorating and put it up. I, personally, adore the font.

So thats it ^-^ Very epic. I'll blog again after I chill out a little, so laters peeps!!!

Tralalalala

Random, yes.
Ok, so I just realized it was thursday and decided to blog. I'm rereading the Mortal Instruments, and since I've somehow never blogged about how freaking amazing the book itself is I'll probably do that. And talk about Jace<3 alot. No, his name doesnt actually have the heart, but it might as well because everyone loves him. EVERYONE. If you don't, either go read the book because you haven't yet or die. I totally love him.
If he breaks up with Clary and then he and Lexie get a divorce I'm marrying him. It was worked out in advance.

Ok, I didn't get on to say anything important today... but I did want to post a Thursday excerpt and say "Hail and Farewell, March." (Read Mortal Instruments to understand the refrence)

ONLY 5 DAYS UNTIL CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS. IMA SCREAM NOW AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Yes. I'm trying to pretend that Simon isn't on the cover. I kind of dislike him. He's not half as cool as Jace.

Ok, so I meant to post more of my Thursday excerpt, but I've got to go take a shower now. Here's the first few lines of my new project (Yes, I know, shame on me). No, unfortunately, it's not The Tide. It has no title yet. But it will, eventually. *nods* Right. Later, peeps!!!



"It takes approximately three heartbeats for someone to hate you.

One for them to see you and process what you are. They always stand there, staring at you with round eyes and open mouths. You can see the gears in their heads turning, struggling to understand what’s before their eyes. One heartbeat for them to realize that you're their worst nightmare.

In the second heartbeat comes fear. Their expressions always change, like their face just can’t stop twitching, and their eyes get impossibly wider.

And in the third heartbeat, they scream. And, when someone screams like they’ve never screamed before, it’s because they hate you. They fear you and anything you’ve ever been, and they hate you. They want to forget you. They want to pretend you’ve never existed. They want you to die on the spot. Anything to take your image from their eyes, to retrieve their naivety and move on like nothing ever happened.

If you’d ever seen me, you would too. "

Skinned. Don't get creeped out, it's a book title.

Oh lookit!!!! I did a real book review *is proud*

 

Skinned- Robin Wasserman

 

Some miracles come with a price . . .

Lia Kahn was perfect: rich, beautiful, popular. Until the accident that nearly killed her.

Now she has been downloaded into a new body that only looks human. Lia will never feel pain again, she will never age, and she can't ever truly die.

Ok, that's not the real pitch, but it was the closest thing I could find in limited time.

 

Pitch:
...Mleh. It was kind of straight out.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Plot: It was very...deep. This is going to make me sound more like a moron than usual, but usually I read light books. You know, glopping in the dark and/or gooey romance with lots of werewolves and violence. This book inspired much, much more thought. It was a little hard to follow sometimes, but really good.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

 

Characters: They were pretty good, really. Not the best, but they were certainly striking and original. As most are in dystopians.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

 

 

Character names: Not too shabby. Nothing really special, but nothing that would inspire a WTF reaction. As a matter of fact, I really like the name Auden.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

 

Originality: It was VERY original. So yeah.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Cover: I thought it was interesting. Not the most amazing thing ever, but it certainly caught my attention. I saw some other girl reading it a while ago and was jealous- I was reading The Giver for school.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Setting: It was good in some places, poor in others. She didn't do a bad job at explaining it, it just wasn't all that interesting or original, you know? 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Writing Style: It was amazing. Well, kind of. The language was amazing. She just spend SO long using that amazing language that we didn't actually get anything important until about 30 pages into the book. Bleh.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Imagery and attention to detail: Eeeeh, pretty good. She had a lot of detail that sounded like it was interesting. It would've been if she actually explained what any of it was. She talked about "Linking in" all the time, but never actually tells the reader what exactly linking in was, even though it was a huge deal for them. I got the impression it was facebook meets world of warcraft meets the news. Fasinating, but I wish she went more into explaining what it was.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Title: It fits really well, actually. It's a little creepy and unusual before you read the book, but it just clicks afterwards.

 ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Overall sunshiny rating:  ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Is it worth the read?: Yeah, I'd say so =) I mean, it's not the most amazing thing ever, but it's certainly worth the read.

Pacing: The pacing was terrible. No offense to the author, but it was. It took a nice long time for us to get into the real meat of the story, and afterwards it really seemed to drag anyways.

I am a no good, very bad, blogger.

I know T-T I've been SOOOO lazy. I was going to do Thusday excerpt this week, but I had a bajillion pounds of makeup work. I keep getting sick.
On the somewhat bright side, I've got 64k in Deadly Design =) I'm going to try to finish it by mid-april. Then I'll be back. Maybe I'll even start informing people I have a blog.... *shrugs*
You know what I discovered the other day? I had 44 views. Because people were going on google and clicking on pictures of Ian Somerhalder that were on my blog. In my opinion, that's awesome. So yeah *nods*
Now I'm rambling... Shoot.
Ok. Well, I kindof have a couple of book reviews. Unfortunately, none of them are glowing or even in the right format. But hey, it's something, right?

Once in a full moon

Honestly, this review is going to be mean.
And I'm just a little bias- When I read this, I was actually searching for flaws. Turns out, they were pretty easy to find.

I actually can't believe this got published. Rather than ranting about every little thing that was bad, I'm just going to list the good things about this book and what I learned.

-I learned that, if you're a bestseller, they'll publish anything else you write. Even if it's absolute crap.
-The main character had a thing for fingerless gloves. Awesome
-The characters stayed true to themselves.
-I learned that your editor doesn't have to read it before it gets published

That's it. I wish I could say it was great, because I wanted to. I read this because it was a werewolf book by a bestselling author, and therefore would be competition if I were to ever get published. I'm not quite pleased to say this book wouldn't be competition for a dead bug glued to a page.
For a start, the author had a knack for making things up. She completely ignores this guy, then when he shows up out of nowhere for no apparent reason and saves her life by doing pretty much nothing, she's suddenly been allured by him for forever. The dialogue was horriffic, and details she added didn't match up to what she said at the begging in of the book. The main character had more or less no flaws (you know, other than being a kissup and too freaking perfect) and the plot in general was so predictable. And the big thing that was supposed to be shocking? They dropped the suspense in less than five pages and did nothing with it. The end was seriously weak and cliche.

To be honest, I really only finished this book so I could say with complete certainty that this was one of the most rediculous books I've ever read.
Would I reccomend reading it? Only if you want to laugh your butt off at the stupidity. I'm almost tempted to reread Vampire Kisses- I really liked that one, but it makes me wonder if I just didn't notice how awful it was.
But hey. On the bright side, the cover's pretty.

Angelfire

From a writer's standpoint- it wasn't all that
From a reader's standpoint- it was awesome.

Allow me to explain ~Insert some dramatic gesture here~... Actually, I don't know how to explain, really, so I'm making a pros and cons list.


-Pros-

-The Story line was pretty good.
-The characters were well done, and at times very funny (though not my personal favorite of sardonic AND funny)
-Some of the descriptions were pretty good.
-It had some original moments

-Cons-

-The writer often used dialogue where imagery and thought would've surficed. Either that or a lot of dialogue was redundant.
-PREDICTABLE. Not cliche, really, but you saw everything coming from miles away. She just made the big shockers obvious from the start. No red herrings either. Juuuuuust preditable.
-It was way too fast in some places and dragged in others.
-The writer skipped months. In some cases, this is appropriate, but not during action-packed time.
-Some facts didn't match up. And I mean, they really didn't match up. For example, in the begining of the book it says she's been in this one class at school for months. Then it says it's september, meaning she started school around the begining of summer. Hence the statement "some facts don't match up".

In general, though, it wasn't a bad book. If I wasn't getting better at picking out good litterature, I would've been all over this. But, from a bitter unpublished girl's standpoint, the writing wasn't all that great. So the verdict is a dead even 5. Or three stars.



Ok... well, I know I said they weren't glowing, but that made me too sad. So I'm going to put a glowing one. Drum roll.....

River Maked

Ok, so I'm going to repeat what I said earlier just a bit.
If you don't read this series, you're stupid. Period.

Note to the crappy authors of the world: THIS is how you're supposed to write. I am totally in love with this series. Mercy's the most kick@$$ MC I've ever come across and there aren't words to describe how awesome Adam is ;)
So... yeah. Read Moon Called, then Blood Bound, then Iron Kissed, then Bone Crossed, then Silver Borne, and then read this. Or I'll eat you 0-0

(The review is being cut off here because the rest of it was me rambling on and on and on and on about how awesome it was and talking about my favorite parts. Go read the books.)








Ok. Now I feel like I've done something useful today. I'll try to blog more often now XD

Peace, Love, and Vam-

OH WAIT!!! My birthday is in 9 days ^-^ Oh yeah. I'm trying to get my mom to let me ditch school the next day so I can get City of Fallen Angels *faints*
Ok, Now I'm done. Peace, Love, and Vampire Diaries peeps!!!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA T-T

*No real spoilers, just emotional ones*
I just finished Vampire Diaries: The Return- Midnight. AND I REALLY WANT SOMEONE TO KILL ME SO I DON'T HAVE TO SUFFER SLOWLY ANYMORE. WHERE IS A TSUNAMI WHEN YOU NEED ONE? (Just kidding, that wasn't funny, I know)
Jeez, I've been bawling my eyes out for the last twenty minutes. And then some. The last time I cried this hard was at the end of Toy Story 3.
I'm in emotional torment, and NO ONE WILL KILL ME. Not even Fallon.

^See this book, people?^

It just crushed my soul.

Then set it on fire.

Then gave the ashes to a shark.

Who was eaten by a bigger shark.

Who was beaten to a bloody pulp by a mallet.

And then eaten alive by a shadow.

Which is, at this exact moment, sitting in my chest.

It kind of feels like rats are nibbling and tearing at my internal organs.

Does that sum it up enough?

Despite the fact that my soul is being tormented (as described graphically above) this book was freakin' amazing. I just wish they included some nice little daggers at the end so we could end the suffering.
I FREAKING LOVE DAMON.
Sorry, had to be said. Ok, I'm done wallowing in self pity people. If you like good books, gorgeous guys, and emotional mangeling, you should read this series NOW.

Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go laugh, cry, and die in a hole at the same time. It's what us crazies do.