Wow I haven't blogged in a while...

Once upon a time, I envisioned having a blog that I would use religiously. Here's another funny joke: Knock knock *who's there* You're mom. OHHHHH. I went there!

Anyway, I have been busy with many things, but regarding writing, I have been focusing on Mercy's Fall (it has changed even more since I last blogged about it...can you believe it? It is completely different than the first draft I ever had, and if you read the first draft and what I have now, you will think it was written by a completely different person.) It is crazy to think that I've been working on this novel for the better part of two years now, and I have yet to get more than ten chapters down. The struggle of writing is real. Overall, I like where it is going now, and I think I have a clearer vision as to where this whole project is going. Hopefully, it will be in stores in, I don't know, two years? Man, I wish. Who knows, you might be reading this now, and come a year or two, you'll be holding my book! The dream.

I have also started two other projects. Both are romances (woot woot!). The first is called Love Thy Enemy, and it is about--get this--it is about vampires. Hell yes. "Oh no, another Twilight!" you say? WRONG! Unlike the bland and pretty-much-useless Bella Swan, Ava Martin is one hell of a bad ass samurai chick! So to sum it up in a few words: this vampire, Peter, becomes blood bonded (which is the vampire equivalence to love at first sight...or bite...heh....okay that was really bad; I'm so sorry) to a human girl, Ava, who happens to be a vampire huntress. The story follows that whole mess. It may not necessarily have a very good plot or romance or dialogue or writing in general, but I started it for my amusement and to humor myself to see where this craziness ends up. It is also very enjoyable writing a strong minded female protagonist that takes no shit from any vampire, even if they are good-looking. Feminism, bitches!

Here is the first 2 chapters of Love Thy Enemy. Check it out!

My next story is one I started about two days ago, and I have high hopes for where it is heading. It is called When Love Conquered All. My inspiration for this story was a song called "What If You" by Josh Radin. Here is the song: 

Isn't it so good! 

Basically, the story is about these two lovers, Romeo and Juliet (yes, it is a twist on the Shakespeare classic, except it is very, very different in many aspects except the love part and the names). Romeo is a guard who guards a castle, and Juliet is a princess; they fall in love, but Romeo leaves her for some unknown reason. I am planning on having epic battles and lust and all great things every romance should have. Right now, it is pretty bare boned, and I only have the first chapter written. 

Read the first chapter of When Love Conquered All here!

That is pretty much all I've been up to. Hopefully, if you're reading this, you like my writing, and stay tuned until my real work comes out! As always, have a stellar day!

Forbidden

Two years ago, I started a novel called Forbidden. It is about a blind southern belle in the later 1800s and a slave who meet each other and fall in love. The girl’s name is Grace, and the boy’s name is Peter. Grace has been molested since she was thirteen by a few of her father’s white workers, but mostly her father’s best friend, Frederick. Her father, Mr. Tomas Fielding, owns a large plantation, and Peter is sold to him. In Peter’s former plantation, he was a slave with his mother, a strong willed woman who taught Peter all he knows. He is something of a prodigy, so he is really intelligent, going above and beyond the teachings of his mother and master, who broke the “no education for slaves” law.

Right now I have eight chapters written. I have it posted on multiple writing communities, and I will add the links below if you, reader, would like to read what I have so far. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, and I do rather like the romance I have brewing between the two main characters. The only real issue I have with it is that I am using all that I’ve learned about slavery in America at that time, which is limited. All I have may not be historically accurate. Right now, I am building the romance and plot, and after I am finished with it, I will research all there is to know about slavery and relations between whites and blacks at that time.

I have an idea where this will go, but I still need to build on it, add more characters, and generally describe all there is to describe about my book, setting, and plot.

Forbidden on Figment

Forbidden on Quotev. Check it out!

A Girl Named Poetry

Image found on Google

A battlefield of painted words
Slicked all along her pale white skin
Tells a story we can't possibly understand

Her metaphors are flying off the canvas
Startlingly bright to our virgin eyes
Her fingers stroke the puddles of tar, blood, and lemonade
And she consumes the fumes of dyes

So simple, yet beautiful in her simplicity

But no--not simple--not at all, not really
Her long, tangled hair twists together, reaching all directions at once
Towards the heavens they soar, the color of soft baby blue
Then deep beneath the ground, underneath her bare feet
Burgundy strands somehow reaching the pits of Hell, and even beyond that!
Wavy, straight, curly, and thin
Chaotic and crazy and colorful
Oh, how her beauty sings to me!

Yet her expression...

Her eyes: blue, green, brown, hazel, and gold all at the same time
Her cheeks swirl with white, pink, and red color
Her entire face speaks of wisdom and experience of her untold story
Of impossible sadness and anger
Of heartbreaking, soul shaking happiness
Joy beyond the description of these mortal words
She has experienced all there is to experience
She has witnessed all there is to witness
Past, present, future; she has seen it all!

But nobody knows her depths...

She is unknown to us
For even when we take a dip in her foreign world
We never really understand her as she does us
Because she is beyond the reaching of our understanding
This girl, this woman, this child...is everything

And she is nothing at all.

Twilight Review **Warning: Reader Discretion is Advised**

I know this is old news, and that everyone knows how badly Twilight was written, but I have been thinking about this book lately--deep thoughts--and I want to share my thoughts on the plot, characters, symbolism--whether it be purposeful or not--and general writing of this paranormal series.

 
First of all, plot. If anything, I think Twilight’s plot is the best thing about the entire series, which, if you have read the books, is not saying much. The plot for the first book is pretty straightforward. Edward and Bella fall in love, but Edward, the ever-so-self-hating vampire is reluctant to give into his urges to love Bella because her blood is extra potent to his ever-so-gloriously-crafted nostrils. This is known to the reader, mostly because Edward states it about a million times in each page, but it is not really shown. Apart from what Edward says, he doesn’t really give much effort into protecting Bella from himself. He takes, what, one month and then he’s all “I can’t stay away from you!” Well, Edward, you must not have loved her that much if you are willing to put her life in danger just by being in her presence! I would understand if her blood smelled like every other person’s blood, and he can’t really help being around every other person in the world--unless he wants to be secluded, but that suck--but since she’s extra smelly, he should have at least put a little bit more effort into staying away from her. Then the rest of the novel--there are also scenes that are completely unimportant, like Edward eating a bite of pizza (who the f**k cares??!!?)--features the evil trio of vamps, even though they aren’t really evil; they are normal vampires who want to, as normal vampires do, suck Bella’s blood. Yada yada, Edward saves her, bites her, sucks the venom, whatever. Honestly, I don’t understand why Edward didn’t just allow her to change into a vampire then. That would literally solve every single issue that come in the next three books. Never would have met the Volturi. Never would have had a kid and get eaten alive from the inside, practically. Never would have had that useless love triangle, which I like to call Bella Always Saying No to Jacob and Jacob Not Taking No For an Answer (creepy much?). Edward would have never left her in New Moon. Victoria probably still would have made that creepy kid army, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier to kill her without human Bella being in the goddamn way all the time.

Talking about human Bella’s, I hate her. Firstly, she has no personality. Right now I’m trying to name traits about her, and the only thing that comes up is weak and boring and annoying. Stephanie Meyer must be anti-feminist because she made Bella the most weak female protagonist I have ever read about. Bella is absolutely useless until the last hundred pages of the last book; her presence literally holds no significance to ‘the group’. She has no special human powers, except the power to make me want to shoot myself in the face. Her entire persona makes teenage girls--who are mostly reading these books--think that the only important thing in life is to have a man. When Edward leaves, she is catatonic for months. She goes crazy, showing her life means nothing without her precious love. The only solace she found was in another man. She never hunkers down and says “f**k this; if Edward doesn’t want me, that’s his loss!” She doesn’t even have to mean it; she just has to put some effort in moving on and having dignity when the only boy she likes goes away. Instead, she shows that it is okay for the most important thing in life to be a boy she’s known for less than six months. If I was her, I would be sad for a month or two and then I’d be angry as hell at him! “Edward doesn’t want to be with me? F**k you too, Edward! Oh, I’m not good enough for you? Are you f**king kidding me, Edward? Fine! Leave! Ain’t nobody missing you, bitch!” would be the exact dialogue I’d put if I wrote New Moon. Honestly, I don’t blame Jacob for always wanting to be with her--even though, seriously, where the hell is the attraction? No damn personality!--for she always leads him on. She doesn’t want to be with him like that, but she shows all the signs of wanting to be with him like that, even telling him to kiss her...when she just got engaged to Edward, that hoebag. Another horrible thing about Bella is that she holds no concern for her own life. She shows little girls that it is okay to hop on a bike with a random stranger. To Bella, it is okay to jump off cliffs to see hallucinations of her ex boyfriend. Yeah, it is totally okay to meet vampires at a ballet studio alone, when she never really even put in effort to make sure it wasn’t a trick. It is totally okay, girls! Do what she does! She’s a perfect role model for the millions of teenage girls reading these books. Way to go, Meyer.

The love triangle in the Twilight series is not much of a triangle at all. Sure, somewhere deep inside her, she loves Jacob, but it is apparent in every single book who she is going to choose. It is not a surprise, and the reader doesn’t gasp the hundred times she literally tells Jacob that she will not and will never choose him over Edward. Jacob really looks pretty stupid because he keeps trying to get her, and for what? To be rejected twenty five thousand times? And besides, he knows that she isn’t ‘the one’ for him, since he hasn’t imprinted on her--don’t even get me started on that Renesmee imprint thing. Apparently Meyer is a supporter of pedophilia as well as anti-feminism.

Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t always hated Twilight as this ‘review’--more of a hate-post, honestly--may show. I used to be a Twi-Hard. I loved Twilight so much and nobody could tell me that it was bad. I was #teamedward all the way, I cried when he left Bella in New Moon, I sighed in happiness when they got married, and I rooted for the Cullens to win every single battle. I hated Rosalie because she didn’t like sweet ol’ Bella and I still know so much about the four books because I must have read them at least eight times. I had Robert Pattinson posters all over my bedroom walls, and yes, I will admit to thinking he was dreamy, even though he is actually really gross. That was years ago, and since that dark period of my life, I have read so many great pieces of literature. I finally sat down to reread the books, and I couldn’t read more than one chapter without rolling my eyes at how ridiculous Bella and the entire series really is. Since that moment, I haven’t given it much thought, but now I feel quite good at venting about how horrible the Twilight Series is. Now I feel I can move on from those Dark Times.

Thanks for reading, and good day to you!


I quite like this cover better; don't you?

Life of a Lily

I have a realistic fiction novel in process called Life of a Lily. This is about a seventeen year old girl named Matilda--aka Lily--who tried to commit suicide. I think my first chapter is one of the best writings I have done in my life. It delves into Lily’s mind, automatically depicting how calculating she is, as a human being. The chapter has such great voice in it, and while it is discussing a serious topic, teenage suicide, it is lighthearted, making the reader laugh. In this chapter, she is meeting her new psychiatrist for the first time, naming her Dr. America. It is mostly her inner monologue throughout the chapter, though, and I really love it.

Of course, as with every novel, I had to have background information. Why did she commit suicide? How is her family life? What kind of person if Lily and how did she arrive at this state of being? I had to be in Dr. America’s position in order to discover my own character. I knew Lily was too stong minded for her to commit suicide because of her being bullied or having self esteem issues. So instead I introduced the idea of her father dying, which then leads to her mother dying, leaving Lily an orphan. I always knew Lily’s father was dead, but her mother dying is a new idea. I tried to have her mother as a character, but she just felt...dead. One of the main reasons why Lily was depressed is because she felt alone in her grief, which meant that her mother was either neglecting her, or she was in her own grief-state, sort of like Katniss Everdeen’s mother in The Hunger Games trilogy. But this brought up the question, if Lily’s mother was catatonic, why would she bring her daughter to the psychologist, especially if she needed a shrink herself. She wouldn’t care enough to help her daughter through mourning her father’s dead, so why would she help her when she needs it psychologically? It didn’t seem to make sense to me. I wanted her mother to seem like she was dead, without actually being dead, but none of it was coming together. So, I just decided that the only solution to this problem was to have her actually be dead, and see how damaged Lily would be after that. I think she would be suicidal, especially if she witnessed the death. (Spoilers!) This also solves a problem I had a while back, which was the question “Why did she try to commit suicide” and I just couldn’t figure it out until now.

But that is not the only question I must answer. Now I am faced with the daunting “What next?” I’m afraid the only way to answer that question is to unfortunately make Lily’s life even more hard. I was toying around with the idea of making Lily’s father have major flaws when he was alive that really affected Lily and her mother after he died. Then this would give Dr. America a sequeway into fixing Lily up and helping her face her--or majorly her father’s that she inherited upon his death--demons. With this idea, though, I don’t know how far this will go, if it does anywhere at all.

Another problem I have is I am trying to avoid the low-budget movie plot in which there are only four characters, half of which are dead. I want to introduce more characters, but I’m unsure how. I was toying around with adding an equally messed up kid named Todd to the equation--I even wrote a few chapters with them together--but it just felt too Fault in our Stars and It’s Kind of a Funny Story like for it to be successful. I felt like I was biting off of John Green’s and Ned Vizzini’s ideas, and honestly the friendship between Todd and Lily was so unlike Lily--giggling, smiling, laughing, etc.--that I tossed it, knowing it would never work. Speaking of Vizzini, I just realized that Lily smokes pot, and while Craig is not the only teenager with psychological issues that smokes pot, I think I’m gonna toss that idea out of the window. Now that I think of it, smoking pot is so unlike Lily. Why did I even think of that in the first place? Damn it Vizzini, get out my head!

If you’d like to read what I have so far, I’ll post the link to Life of a Lily.

First 5 chapters of Life of a Lily. Check it out!

Mercy's Fall

   So right now, I am focusing on my novel-in-process, which is called Mercy's Fall. A short summary is that it is about a human girl named Mercy who has weird powers that she doesn't understand, and her venturing out into the world for the first time. She figures out the repercussions for this, realizing that she is in the middle of a war with angels and demons.

    A few months ago I had written about eight long chapters, which introduced three main characters through each other their perspectives. I reread the chapters I had and really did not like what I saw, so I scrapped it all and restarted.

   Now I have a prologue, and two chapters written, and I absolutely love where it is going. I realized that with my previous half-draft, having three different perspectives was way too difficult and it was not working for the story line I had in mind. My angel, Ramiel, was way too human, especially with the romance I set up between him and Mercy. Pierce, although with the bad-ass edge I made him have, was too...good. I wanted him to be more evil, more demon than he was. He was too human as well. Mercy had no personality whatsoever, and even I felt bored to read what she had to say.

   With what I have now, I focus mainly on Mercy as a main character. It is in third person, but limited to Mercy and her experiences as she goes through the hardships she will have to go through. I had a review on Figment that said my story felt like a low-budget movie, with the minimal characters besides the three main ones I wrote about. I considered that when planning out the new Mercy's Fall, and I have introduced three other characters, a priest, a nun, and a boy named Thomas. With the two chapters I have written, I have not introduced Ramiel or Pierce, although I am going to have them in my novel as characters.

   The problems I am facing now with this NIP is deciding how much should be background and how much should actually be in present-day times. So far, I only have background. That is around 8700 words of background. I'm afraid that might be too much, but Mercy has such a complicated background that I feel I have to explain it in order for the reader to fully grasp what kind of person Mercy is, and how she arrived at the situation that she is in today (the "today" of the story, of course). I know that I have to sequeway into present day, as soon as possible, and I think figuring out how to do that in a way that doesn't make it feel all over the place is my major problem with the piece right now.

   I guess all I can do is write and see where I go from there.

Prologue and First Chapter. Check it out!

A little about myself

  Hello every person who is reading this right now. You have reached my blog, where I speak about writing--specifically my writing--and other things related to writing. As discussed in my About Me section, I am an aspiring author with a dream of reaching publication. I have liked writing ever since I can remember, but it is only a few years ago when I took it seriously. I've always loved to read; I've always loved getting lost in the worlds authors, like J.K Rowling and Stephen King, have created. I decided that I wanted to create worlds that my readers can fall in love with. I want to create characters that make readers weep in sadness and laugh in joy. I have read so many books, and I have had connections with characters as if they really existed, as if they were my friends, and I was theirs. I want to create that connection with readers using my words. That is how I fell in love with the art of writing. It's my passion.

   I am in the process of writing two novels. I have an account on a website called Figment, where people post their writings. This website allows people to receive feedback and critiques on how to improve their writing as well as offering ideas, etc. On this website, I have over twenty pieces of mine posted--among them are novels in process, short stories, and poetry.

   You are probably wondering why I have this blog then. My goal is to discuss writing and talk about, not only my writing and what I'm writing about, but also the troubles I face with writing and, hopefully in due time, my process of...hopefully getting published? I also want to connect with my readers, the ones I have now and the ones I will hopefully gain in the future.

  Thanks for reading, and thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you enjoy my content, my writing, and my dream.

My Figment Account