November Or Bust!

I need to go to Wal-Mart tomorrow. Where do you find coloring books in Wal-Mart, though? Are they in the books section? Oh god, I hope not. Save for the stuff I need to buy for Nilly’s “package”, I can’t spend any more money for a couple weeks. All my petty spending is starting to add up, and my non-petty spending (like that recent 50 for books) isn’t helping at all. :/ At least I could pay for the books with tip money, but I ate out tonight so yeah. I’ve got to reign in the spending a bit. The only other money I’ll be dropping any time soon is to pre-order Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, because I can’t turn down David Levithan, especially with Rachel Cohn.

The closer to November we get, the more excited I find myself about NaNoWriMo. I wish I’d actually tried more last year but the truth was, I was more interested in working on Guardians than I was a new story. This year, though, a rewrite of Backwards Compatibility is exactly what I need. I’m not the only one doing a rewrite of sorts, though. Both Regina and Joana are, so I don’t feel cheap for taking and idea and reusing it. (To be fair, Backwards Compatibility never really developed so much, anyway, so really, I’m starting from scratch.)

I have my characters developed and worked out. I have a basic plot woven and a few ideas set up. While talking to Nella, I found the urge to create a scene with piñatas, which will actually fit in PERFECTLY! We did a bit of minor brainstorming and now I have this scene set up perfectly in my head and I just want to WRITE it! I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling the intense yearning for NaNoWriMo. All the others with ideas plotted out ungh ungh ungh. To hold me over, I’ve been working on drabbles and ideas, so I can play with the characters and get further in to their heads but keep myself from actually writing the novel like I want.

I’m pretty sure I like the direction this is going to go, though. In my first attempt at BC, Chance was only partially fleshed out, Karma became much larger than I’d anticipated and I lost base with Theo and Drima. Other friends I’d created were dropped, more or less, from the start. At least I know where I’m going, I have a cover I’m more or less satisfied with, and a cast of characters I can work with and utilize to their full potential. I’m glad I let Karma become something more, especially because I can never write a straight-up romance. There’s more to it than just the relationship between Crickette and Chance, which in itself is more complex than simple romance. They’re two kids who are struggling to find themselves. With high school over, Crickette is trying to become someone she wants to be, not someone she’s felt she’s supposed to have been all along. And this means changes for her. Changes in who she hangs out with, how she thinks, what she does.

While writing this will be semi-difficult for me, because I’m more of a happily ever after sort of fan, it’s not so much the issues with Chance and Crickette that are causing me difficulty as it is Drima and Crickette, hah. I like Drima as a character, I really do, but as a friend to Crickette, it’s time for her to wake up and smell the coffee.

Over the weekend I finally got back to some reading! It’s about time, now that my bookshelves are packed full and I have a good few still needing to be read. A while back, I bought The Summoning from Wal-Mart, on a whim, which is my curse. I have a horrible habit of going to the book section and grabbing anything that doesn’t sound TOO horrible (sometimes mistakes are made, such as with Beautiful Creatures. Ugh.) and making off with it. And it took me forever to get around to even reading it because the more I thought about it, the more I began to second-guess the book.

Did I really want to read more paranormal fiction? Did I really want to risk lame, boring girl falling in love with lame, boring, beautiful guy and losing whatever plot might’ve started?

Eventually, I caved and I started it. The beginning was much slower than I would have liked, but once I got about 100 pages in, it really picked up and went from interesting to INTERESTING. It turned out to be more than just a ghost book, as I’d been expecting, but it didn’t take paranormal too far, at least for me. In fact, it almost touches in to a Sci-Fi sort of realm. Almost, but not really. Anyway, that’s really rambly without telling much, I realize.

I don’t mind Chloe as a protagonist. I don’t think I particularly love or adore her, but I don’t really dislike her. She’s fifteen and young and she acts her age. She makes mistakes and doesn’t always use her brain but honestly, when I was fifteen, such was my life, too. I like the supporting cast, too. Derek and Simon both had me wary in the beginning, which I think was well-executed. Personally, I was a bit more fond of Simon but I don’t have any problems with Derek, which I love! You know from the start there will be a sense of a love triangle, but it’s not in your face, it’s not the gunning plot of the trilogy, it’s not even so large-scale, which I LOVED! But beyond the romantic interests, there’s Rae, who I guess is the least liked by me, Liz who I absolutely adore, and a nicely crafted antagonist in Tori who I first absolutely loathed but have come to admire.

After I finished The Summoning I rushed off to Wal-Mart after work the next day to buy The Awakening and The Reckoning. I’ve got The Reckoning left to finish and I hope it’s good. The second wasn’t quite as good as the first, but it’s not that it was really BAD, though. It just was different and I fully understand WHY I didn’t like it.

There are cutesy moments. I squealed a lot. I’ve read part of The Recknoning and through the three books I’ve already cried a bit. I wouldn’t call it an amazing series but it was really good. Much better than I expected at least.

I'll try to write a proper review of it sometime after I've finished the series.


Mmm. Tomorrow after work, I need to write letters. Yes.