50 PEOPLE HAVE ADDED WSD! SO I JUST NEED 50 MORE IN ORDER TO DRAW!
I am doing a YA Paranormal Romance book giveaway as a thanks for all the Stars out there who have supported me in the cover reveal of When Stars Die, which you can find here if you have not yet seen it.
The above books are the books you have to choose from in the giveaway. Should you win, you can choose three of them. Yes. Three books. I will be giving away three of the above ten books: Clockwork Angel, Evermore, A Great and Terrible Beauty, Paranormalcy, City of Bones, Beautiful Creatures, Minutes Before Sunset, Fallen, Wake, and Hex Hall.
So what do you have to do to get entered for this giveaway? Simple, really. All you have to do is add When Stars Die to your to-be-read list on Goodreads–that is assuming you are interested in YA paranormal romance; I simply don’t want you to add it if you are not interested. That will be your entry. You can find When Stars Die’s Goodreads page here. ONCE I HAVE 100 ADDS, I WILL DRAW FOR THE WINNER.
Note: I do buy these books myself. They are not books that I own already. They will be brand new books. You can choose to either have a physical copy or an e-book copy should you win this giveaway. I will follow up with more information for the winner.
I am doing a YA Paranormal Romance book giveaway as a thanks for all the Stars out there who have supported me in the cover reveal of When Stars Die, which you can find here if you have not yet seen it.
The above books are the books you have to choose from in the giveaway. Should you win, you can choose three of them. Yes. Three books. I will be giving away three of the above ten books: Clockwork Angel, Evermore, A Great and Terrible Beauty, Paranormalcy, City of Bones, Beautiful Creatures, Minutes Before Sunset, Fallen, Wake, and Hex Hall.
So what do you have to do to get entered for this giveaway? Simple, really. All you have to do is add When Stars Die to your to-be-read list on Goodreads–that is assuming you are interested in YA paranormal romance; I simply don’t want you to add it if you are not interested. That will be your entry. You can find When Stars Die’s Goodreads page here. ONCE I HAVE 100 ADDS, I WILL DRAW FOR THE WINNER.
Note: I do buy these books myself. They are not books that I own already. They will be brand new books. You can choose to either have a physical copy or an e-book copy should you win this giveaway. I will follow up with more information for the winner.
Some time ago I wrote a post on my least favorite genre, which is romance. I don’t like pure romance books because it seems a prerequisite for writing one is to have crap happen that muddles a relationship, and then it ends happily-ever-after. It’s not that I don’t believe that happy relationships aren’t possible, because I am in one myself, but it’s very formulaic. If I know they’re going to get together in the end, I frankly don’t give a crap what happens in the book to bring them up to that point because I basically know the ending, mmkay? I think romance is a sweet, beautiful thing, but if the outcome is predictable, I will not bother with the book. Period. And, really, most of the outcomes are predictable because romance is a wish-fulfillment genre. But the beauty about romance as a sub-genre is that the plot can do anything to that romance, and you have no idea what it’s going to be.
I am about to spoil The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, so if you have not read it and want to read it, I suggest not reading this next part. The primary genre of this book is basically sick lit, even though it is shelved in your basic teen fiction and is considered literature. But it is also a tragic romance, which I didn’t know upon picking up the book. I knew there was romance in it, muddled by cancer and teen things, but I had no clue what I was getting myself into when I began reading it.
This has become one of my favorite books of all time partly because of the sick lit and partly because of the romance as sub-genre.
As I began reading the book, I melted at the sweet romance, but I also began to realize this romance wasn’t going to end well, but I had no idea who it wasn’t going to end well for and why. Hazel has stage IV thyroid cancer and Gus is an amputee whose cancer is in remission. Now John Green masterfully creates foreshadow to show who is going to bear what tragedy, but it is symbolism that you have to really pay attention to. As the end of the book draws near, Gus’s cancer returns and it is Hazel who must bear the tragedy of witnessing Gus’s dying. This was completely unpredictable because Gus’s cancer had been in remission for a while and even though Hazel is on a treatment plan that has kept her cancer at bay, her lungs were basically useless, so she has to carry around an oxygen tank, and she still struggles with her cancer in ways Gus daoesn’t have to struggle with his. So Gus dies at the end, a rather horrific death, let’s be honest, and your feelings have been left slaughtered and bloody because you spend x amount of pages reading the romance between Hazel and Gus, only for the sick lit aspect of the book to tear it apart. It is sad and tragic, but Hazel draws strength from the tragedy and knows she can survive it.
TFIOS has made me fall in love with romance as a sub-genre because, really, the main genre can send the romance spiraling in a thousand different directions that romance as a genre doesn’t seem to do. And the romance itself can really muddle the main plot in a thousand delectable ways.
Do you remember some time ago when I said that When Stars Die’s sequel was not going to have romance? Well, I’m back to working on it now and have discovered that there is some romance. It’s not as much as WSD, but there is still romance in it and I have decided to keep it because, well, a lot of crap happens to Alice, and she deserves something amongst all the crappiness. But, of course, the romance aspect is completely unpredictable. I don’t even know where my MC and her love interest are going to end up. But I hesitate to say that this one can be defined as paranormal romance like WSD can be. This one will just be flat out paranormal. Possibly paranormal suspense.
Once I finish with the Stars trilogy and this contemporary fantasy, I am going to start on a sick lit, sort of tragic romance book myself. I’m thinking of doing a novel-length alternative version of a YA contemporary short story I did last month. But that won’t be for some time–but I’ll probably start outlining it anyway just so it’s there.
Erotica: It isn’t erotica itself as a genre that I don’t get. It’s popular, I can totally see why people read it. What I don’t get about erotica is why people are trying to defend it as something more than literary porn. It has a story? Okay. So does a lot of visual porn, like hentai, for one thing. Can we just get rid of this idea that erotica somehow has a higher status than porn simply because it’s the written word? There is no shame in reading erotica, but trying to elevate it above visual porn is something that I don’t get. I don’t read erotica, but I’ve seen enough bad blurbs (and god-awful covers) to know that it’s not something I want to read, and that it’s just sex, sex, story, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, story is in here somewhere, and more sex. Maybe I just don’t get it because I don’t read it. But I have no interest in reading it because I’m the type of reader that wants to take something meaningful away from a book. I don’t read purely for entertainment, which there is nothing wrong with doing.
New Adult: Okay, so I get its existence because college-aged kids don’t have any books for them. But I feel like all the genre is right now is sexed-up YA, which is what it’s currently being described as. Isn’t the genre something more, or is it really just all sexed-up YA romance books? Because that’s all I’m seeing in the genre so far. I see no one really trying to push the boundaries of NA and make it into something more meaningful. I suppose I could be that writer, but I’m not interested in writing college stories. They don’t appeal to me.
Writing males and females: Why do we worry so much about how to write male and female characters? Why don’t we just write people? Not all boys fit into the stereotypical boy box, just as not all girls fit into the stereotypical girl box. In my current book, the main character is a boy, but I am not worrying about how to write him as a boy. I am worrying about writing him as a person because he is an individual with his own personality. Like I don’t get it when people write reviews about boys that read like girls. What do girls even read like? For that matter, what do boys read like? The best writers tend to not differentiate, I think.
Brand: There is this obsession with branding authors so that authors inevitably force themselves into a box. There is nothing wrong with wanting to write only one genre, but it becomes problematic for someone like me who goes from paranormal romance to contemporary fantasy to someone who really does want to write just a contemporary book but is afraid to confuse her readers because people who stand by branding claim writing outside of genres will screw you over. Libba Bray did it. Why can’t I?
Literary fiction: I seriously don’t get what makes a book literary and what makes a book commercial. John Green is apparently a literary author but has commercial appeal. I’ll admit I want to make my current book have more literary elements, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t quite know what I mean. I have heard that literary books have more meaning than commercial, but I have read commercial books with just as much depth. So I really don’t get it.
Is there anything you don’t get? Anything you can help me get?
So I have been having some success with Tumblr lately. Despite it being very fandom heavy, it is possible to expand your audience using this website just by being socially involved with other users. This sounds like complete common sense, but when I say Tumblr is fandom heavy, it is super fandom heavy. You have Dr. Who, Sherlock, Hannibal, Homestuck, John Green, ect… It seems like unless you’re established already, you can’t possibly hope to get anywhere. But I am, slowly but surely. And it’s been worth it. People are excited about my book.
Every night, when I’ve finished with my writing, I like to open up my Ask Box on Tumblr for Anons and questions in general. They’ve all been about writing and publishing, and most of them are from young writers, which excites me because they are my audience and it’s just amazing to see talented, driven young men and women wanting to make it in the same field I am involved with.
In any case, I heavily adore the young writers.
They don’t take it for granted that being published is awesome. It is awesome being published. Granted, it’s not earth-shattering or life-altering, but it shows you worked your butt off to get your manuscript to a place of publishability (this is a word now, says me). I feel like older writers get so caught up in sales and how difficult it is to get published, that they forget there is a sort of magic to knowing you’re getting published or that you are publishing–both traditional and self-publishing. It’s just plain awesome because now you can make money doing what you love, and it’s even more awesome knowing that people you don’t even know are reading your book. Young writers don’t take this for granted and feel like it’s an amazing thing to be talking to a published author–or an author publishing or about to be published.
They look up to you. Seriously. They do. And it’s a freaking amazing feeling to know that you are a role model to these younger writers. If they love what you have written or can’t wait for your book to come out, they’re going to look to you for guidance. They’re going to go to you with questions. For me, I answer them as honestly as I can. I don’t like to claim I’m an expert in my field. I really don’t feel it. I’m simply a writer and that is all, but I will help whenever I can.
There is some talent out there. There really is, and it’s awesome to watch as they grow and improve, and, in some cases, surpass you. I know I want these young writers to surpass me because I feel like books do make the world a better place, just for the messages they instill. The better that these young writers get, the more these messages can mean something, the more interconnected the world will be. I think.
They are intelligent. Reading snippets of what some of these young writers write on Tumblr has shaped my own writing and keeps me in the voice of a teenager. I feel like I will forever be writing YA because it is the one genre I love to read. So reading some of these teens’ writing helps me to get in the mindset of a teenager for my own writing because a lot of teens write about themselves.
They want to know what you’re writing. I get this all the time on Tumblr. What are you writing? And of course I have no qualms talking about it because I’ve already written it. But I keep it to a minimum.
They are curious. This is perhaps my favorite thing about young writers. They want to know everything there is to know about writing and the publishing industry. They want to know this from experienced writers. Of course, as an experienced writer you have to gently tell them to do the research, but it’s still cool to know that they want to know it from you.
They have an intense interest in books. Seriously, I’ve never seen such fiery passion about certain books from young writers–or readers, really. They really want to talk about their favorite books, and I have no problem with this because their favorite books are often mine. I mean, I love John Green, and I love that there is a fandom for him composed of young readers and writers. There is so much fan art of his books, and that is freaking awesome because it keeps you as a writer dreaming of others doing fan art of your own book one day.
So these are just some of my favorites things about young writers. What are you favorite things about writers in general?
I haven’t read fantasy in forever, and I can’t even tell you why. I’ve just been thirsting for a lot of YA contemporary lately, along with the occasional dystopian and paranormal YA novel. But I saw Jake Bonsignore’s book on Facebook in one of the Like events for Facebook Pages, and the cover immediately drew me to the book. I am not ashamed to admit I do judge a book by its cover. With so many books competing against one another for shelf space and online space, books nowadays have to have some reason to excite the reader, and his cover lured me in to read the blurb. Then the blurb itself excited me, and I bought the book, despite the protests my bank account made (we’re all good). In any case, let’s get on with the review.
Breena Taljain’s life nearly comes to an end when she comes across the Patriarch, a man so steeped in hatred he has all of Purgaire living in fear. His assault on her occurs because her mother’s addiction put them both in debt and left Breena a practical street rat having to work at a seedy bar just to pay for her own chance at existence.
Then you have Galbrecht Atalir, an alcoholic doctor dealing with the death of his entire family at the hands of the Patriarch. Breena and Galbrecht’s paths cross when he discovers Breena is his newest patient. In order to relieve her suffering, he gives her a drug that sends her to an entirely new world so far removed from Purgaire that Breena does not want to leave. However, when Breena’s health itself begins to decline, she finds she must journey to a harsh world in order to overcome the tribulations of her own mind.
I just want to say that what interests me most about this book is that Breena’s state in the hospital coincides with what’s happening with her in Araboth. At the beginning, when Galbrecht’s drug is working its magic, she is in the beautiful Araboth with achingly vivid, beautiful descriptions. But then Galbrecht realizes he can’t keep giving her more of the drug, so Breena is soon plunged into the hinterlands, a harsh, harsh wilderness filled with terrifying creatures that seem to represent the monsters of her own mind. It is such a psychological thriller that reminds me of Flavia Bujor’s Prophecy of the Stones, except it’s done one hundred times better, and Breena is a fully fleshed character struggling to stay alive against all odds. Her friends are there to compliment her and to help her remember that life is indeed precious, in spite of the appalling life she lived in Purgaire.
The pacing of this book is fast, super fast, so if you’re into psychological thrillers, especially of the fantasy variety, you’ll tear through this book. One moment Breena is living in Purgaire, scrounging any bit of money she can get from her perverted boss, and the next she is on the streets trying to outwit the the Patriarch, only to find herself nearly murdered at his hands. Then you go on to Galbrecht, then to Araboth, then Galbrecht again, and it’s a rollercoaster of intense emotions and varying points-of-view that are very colorful to read. This novel is a third person omniscient book, but Bonsignore does it so masterfully that you can’t wait to see what all the characters are thinking as they’re doing what they’re doing.
The Patriarch himself is so chilling to read about because he kills mercilessly and is responsible for a good majority of the addicted druggies in Purgaire–which is what makes Purgaire such a hostile environment. Since everyone is so contingent on the drug the Patriarch dishes out, people are heinous and have lost their humanity somewhere in the drug addictions, so people like Breena suffer in the process.
Breena is an incredibly strong heroine who, despite all the pain she has suffered, fights through and refuses to give up, especially knowing it is possible for her to have the life she deserves. As someone who has struggled with suicidal ideation, Breena herself is an inspiring character.
Galbrecht is also a very likable character too because of his unrelenting desire to help Breena, in spite of not knowing this girl. He refuses to lose his humanity in Purgaire.
Overall, this book deserves its full 5 stars. It is my type of book: both dark and fantastical. I can’t think of any YA fantasy books I can easily compare it to, but I very much look forward to his sequel, Awakening the Fire.
If you’ve been paying attention to the world of publishing lately, then you’ll know there’s been a lot of complaints regarding the book covers of young adult books. They’re too gendered, appealing to one gender over another, instead of trying to appeal to both. Here is a good article on the subject. The article basically states that due to the nature of the covers, pink covers, or “girly” covers, will turn away boys and suggest that they don’t need to concern themselves with the female experience. It is acknowledged that girls will read almost anything but boys won’t, so to gender neutralize covers will draw in both. At the same time, the article also acknowledges that this isn’t full-proof because then it’s just feeding into sexism, whereby masculinity is seen as the norm, seen as gender neutral, and femininity is not.
I don’t think covers need to be gender neutralized. I don’t think that’s where the problem lies. I think the problem lies in the misrepresentation of the book, and the article does acknowledge this–briefly. Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar received a rather, *ahem*, jarring cover makeover that is actually rather insulting. This cover makes the story of The Bell Jar seem frivolous. It’s not that it’s “girly”, because there is certainly nothing wrong with that. It’s that it’s completely misrepresenting what The Bell Jar is about!
I don’t even like the term “girly.” We grow up thinking pink is for girls and blue is for boys, but pink was once for boys and blue for girls. Funny how marketing changed all that.
There isn’t anything wrong with a pink cover, as long as it’s not misrepresenting what the book is about. I frankly enjoy the color pink–a light pink though, much like the satin on pointe shoes. But I rather hate the thought that boys are turned off by pink covers. We’ve made it such a threatening color to the point where pink covers on books scare boys away. That needs to change–not the book covers, unless they’re misrepresenting the book.
I think pink is sassy, outgoing, and bold. So, pink wouldn’t fit with any of my books because my characters aren’t sassy, outgoing, or bold. But I don’t see it as inherently girly. Wanting to get rid of pink covers or anything “girly” is just feeding into sexism, and that doesn’t need to happen.
When I do my book covers, I don’t even think of the gender of my readers. When I do a book a cover, I think of an object, something symbolic, that would relay the overall theme of my novel. Then I think of a background color that would best emphasize the object and portray the book. The cover for When Stars Die has not yet been approved, but I chose a certain object that symbolizes the freedom all witches seek, but yet they’re tightly bound by the rules of their mortal world. I then painted a dark blue, snowy backdrop since the book takes place in the freezing winter, and dark blue hints at the darkness present in the book.
Of course, if this cover is not approved, I did mention what kind of cover I wanted, and it’s a cover that will emphasize the darkness in the book. It’s a paranormal romance, more heavy on the paranormal/darkness aspect than on the romance. The romance is important, but the book isn’t just about that, so to have a cover that tries to convey the romance in my book would be total misrepresentation.
Overall, what I think needs to happen with book covers is that the stories need to start being properly represented, without publishers worrying about what gender to market to. An attractive cover is an attractive cover, and I think both boys and girls can agree on this, whether or not that cover is trying to market to one gender or another. The Bell Jar, for one thing, could use a total cover overhaul. It’s completely disrespecting both Sylvia Plath and her story.
This post has been taken out of context, so if you’re curious about the full article, just type the headline into Google.
Young adult literature is popular, as evidenced by the above post. What caught me most about this specific passage though was the mention that it is embarrassing that so many adults read young adult novels, the implication being that you’re hooked on to your teenage years. I don’t know about you, but I don’t wear any rose-colored glasses about my teenage years. I suppose the older one gets though, the more tempting it is to put on rose-colored glasses about one’s childhood, forgetting all the messy emotions you feel as you’re growing up, the total lack of freedom, having to be 100% dependent on people to care for you, and all sorts of other things that actually make me grateful that I am not a child anymore. I suppose one can wish to return to one’s childhood with the wisdom one has now, but no one is going to treat you as any less of a child just because you know arguing with your parents is senseless.
In any case, I find it offensive that young adult novels are still being held below adult novels and literary classics. Sure, there are some classics among young adult novels, but they’re classics for children, not classics overall. No one considers it embarrassing that there are kids who read adult books or that teens are forced to read classics they likely don’t relate to. But we’re still belittling young adult novels as less than other genres, even children’s literature, for reasons I can’t comprehend.
I suppose popularity breeds resentment, but books are popular for a reason. The public isn’t concerned about the nuances of writing so much as writers themselves, so they’re not as picky about artful writing as we are, which is probably why a book like Twilight was so popular among average readers but so scorned among the writing community.
I don’t think young adult fiction is popular among adults because we want to re-claim our teen years. I think young adult fiction is popular among adults because we want to remind ourselves how messy the teen years actually are. And they are. They’re rife with muddled emotions, hormones that screw with every decision you make, relationships that can turn potentially disastrous; forced to act like an adult but treated as a child; and so many other things that make the young adult genre as popular as it is.
I love the young adult genre because I love dramatic character change and emotional stories. Teens are chockfull of the potential to develop dramatically, thus creating emotion-centered characters that are very much about themselves.
While Suzanne Collins may not have the best prose available, she sure the heck knows how to craft an ingenious story, and story should take precedence over whether or not you can create artful prose that rivals the prose of the classics (I shoot for both, but at the end of the day, I want readers to love my story more than my writing).
I think it’s fantastic that teen fiction is popular among adults. This popularity has brought more notice and awareness to the young adult genre as a whole, and I find that amazing. While some people still scoff, you can’t deny how popular young adult literature has become within the last ten years.
This is the longest post I will probably ever write, but bare with me.
I think a lot of people can understand that mental illness is real, but I think the misunderstanding of mental illness begins when we start searching for reasons why so-and-so is depressed or why so-and-so struggles with anxiety. We naturally want to seek out reasons for why people feel the way they do. We think that all mental illness has to be completely situational and that at its heart, mental illness must stem from some sort of trauma that would have anybody understanding why so-and-so is so ill.
I’ve just rid myself of that curiosity. Yes, I think it is important to find the root cause of mental illness so the healing can begin, but now I’ve shifted my mindset so that instead of asking mentally ill people why they feel the way they do, I now realize it is more important how they feel and not why they feel that way. It’s traumatizing in itself to feel so depressed you can’t get out of bed, or so suicidal you want to tear yourself apart so you don’t have to deal with yourself.
Yet, some people are not going to share this mindset. Some people are going to fish for reasons and compare one reason to another.
I bring this topic up because now that I am doing a book giveaway of 13 Reasons Why, I want to discuss mental illness in young adult novels and why it’s such a difficult topic to tackle. A lot of reviewers for Jay Asher’s book pointed out that Hannah was being a bit pathetic for committing suicide over the reasons that she did. They lament there are people so much worse off than Hannah and claimed her reasons for wanting to die were stupid. Even MC Clay wants to place the blame on Hannah, which is a natural thing to do. However, Jay Asher does his best to explain the snowball effect, whereby so much stuff just builds up, eventually snowballing and crushing the person under the weight of that snowball. If stress is not reconciled, it’s going to build up and break you. I thought Jay Asher did a marvelous job at explaining this, and when I read it in high school, I understood it. I don’t think there are any good reasons to commit suicide, but I understand why Hannah broke. And Hannah was probably depressed from all the stress, something Jay Asher did not explicitly state but rather implied. What is more tragic than Hannah’s death is that no one saw Hannah coming apart.
But the problem with 13 Reasons Why is that not every teen who reads it is going to understand that–and I am excluding adults from this equation because the book isn’t meant for them. No matter how much Jay Asher stresses the snowball effect, our society wants us to believe that tragic individuals are tragic because of severe trauma.
Mental illness has a root cause, but everyone’s breaking point is different. My breaking point occurred due to a bad time with my fibromyalgia. It is much better now, but it seems to freak out around the fall. I was working, doing ballet, and taking classes, and eventually all the stress piled up to the point where I found myself having to drop ballet in favor of naps because I would be so fatigued from fibro flares, and work wore on me because I’d get flares during work, and eventually I started feeling pathetic because all I did was sleep, sleep, sleep, and I couldn’t bring myself to do anything I loved. So it was work, work, work, and sleep, sleep, sleep, and ouch, ouch, ouch. That snowballed me to the point where I became depressed and suicidal because it didn’t feel like there was going to be an end to the pain. So there wasn’t just one cause, and it never is for mental illness.
Hannah’s breaking point occurred because it’s obvious she was a lonely girl in the first place who struggled with poor self-esteem. So all this stuff happened to her that never got reconciled, built up, and broke her. She likely became depressed and dwelled heavily on these things and blamed herself for everything that happened. Since she is a teenager, she has no wider perspective to realize that high school is not all there is to the world, and so she saw no way out. She never reached out to anyone, and so she felt trapped.
Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is not the fault of 13 Reasons Why but the fault of a society that believes tragic individuals are tragic because of severe trauma, not because of vulnerable personalities shaped by a society that believes hardening individuals to the “cruelties” of life is the best way for them to survive, rather than creating compassionate individuals who help one another out of love and not some desire for something in return. So a lot of criticism in young adult books is aimed at the mental illnesses themselves because people want a reason for why a character is depressed. Frankly, by the time one has reached the stage of depression the syndrome, it no longer matters why that person is depressed. It is the fact that that person is depressed in the first place that matters more than the reasons.
I am worried about how my WIP Stolentime will one day be received. It deals heavily with depression and suicidal ideation. Gene dwells on suicide a lot. It is my hope that my book will help people better understand these dark feelings, but I realize a lot of people won’t. They might perceive him as whiny, that he needs to get over it, but I am going to do my best not to convey him that way and just convey him the way people suffering from suicidal ideation actually are. Most are not whiny. I certainly wasn’t. I was quiet and withdrawn, left to my own thoughts. I want my book to reach out to the ones who are quiet and withdrawn, and I want my book to reach out to those who judge mental illness and help them better understand it. My book isn’t just about a depressed teen, but a depressed teen who understands depression all too well and even mentions that depression is a trauma unto itself, that the reasons for depression don’t matter as much as the illness itself.
50 PEOPLE HAVE ADDED WSD! SO I JUST NEED 50 MORE IN ORDER TO DRAW!
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