Ideas are cheap

At least I tell myself that. But then I have an idea.

And here's how that goes

Shiny New Idea: (waving frantically) Hey! Hey! WRITE ME!! No, don't listen to that other idea! Write me!

Me: I have work to do. You know, a contract?

SNI: But I'm a brilliant new idea. You should be honored to have even had me. Do you know how rare we are?

Me: I had a good idea for a whole trilogy last week, what makes you so different?

SNI: I have an awesome title. (holds out hands while nodding)

Me: I don't have time for this.

SNI: But I won't let you down like all those other ideas. I am the IT factor. (widens eyes and nods).

Me:(long suffering sigh) Fine. I'll write you down. That's all I can promise. You'll have to wait in line with the others.

SNI: A line? A NUMBER? Fine, you wanna make me wait, fine. Have ALL THE THOUGHTS! (floods my brain with the whole world, the strange cultures, the twists, the imagery) HA! SEE IF YOU CAN WRITE LIKE THAT!

Me: Alright, I'll put together an outline, but I really do have a deadline. I need some space.

SNI: Okay, I can be patient. (leaks more imagery and some FEELS)

Me: Hey, I said space, okay?

SNI: I just don't want you to forget. I think I'm pretty awesome.

Me: I noticed.

SNI: (leaks more details)

Me: (sigh)

And for my theme...

Okay, you got me, I haven't done an A to Z challenge yet, and this year isn't looking good. In fact, I usually take April off from blogging (read: my posting doesn't change at all, but I pretend to post less for my sanity).

And part of the reason that I'm not jumping into A to Z this year is that I start to run out of things to blog about. I mean, yes, I can regale you all with tales of my life, but really, we only need one poopy post, I think I've got that covered.

Most of what I think I should talk about is entirely forbidden.

Hmmm, forbidden. I'll have to think on that. I could do an entire A to Z on the forbidden conversations in publishing.


Well, I'll have to give that some thought.

How about you, do you feel like you're running out of topics for blogging?

Feeling like a square peg surrounded by round holes, a super late IWSG

I don’t know how many of you feel like the world was built for you, but my guess is not many. For me, the world is designed for people smaller than me. Now, I know smaller people swear that the world is designed for tall people, but that’s not been my experience.

My jeans are three inches too short―always.

My shoes? I wear them a size small because they rarely make them in my actual size.

I hit my head on door jambs. You'd be surprised how many people think it's okay to have non-standard door jambs.

Toilets are designed for the Wizard of Oz's lollipop kids as far as I can tell.

My shirts always show midriff. Let me be clear, I do not want to show midriff, but woman’s clothing is designed for people 6 to 8 inches shorter than me. I wear a lot of camisoles because midriff is not a fashion choice I’m okay with.

My desk is already on two blocks, and to be truthful, I have to hunch to use it properly.

I hit my head on the roof of my car if I go over a bump.

That style of ¾ sleeves? I wore that way before it was a thing. ¾ sleeves don’t cover my elbows

Someone once asked me if I was comfortable in my chair and I laughed. The chairs don’t go high enough to be comfortable and fit under the desks.

My whole world doesn’t fit, and honestly, my stories don't fit either. To make matters worse, more and more, I don’t seem to have the ability to duck my head and stuff my stories into shoes that are a size too small. They don’t fit. Somehow, I can stuff my feet into those shoes, but I can’t make my stories suffer like that.

The only problem is, like all things, there are stories that are cute and get to wear the beautiful glass slippers (have you ever seen glass slippers in size 11? Yeah, me either), and then there are my stories. The cute stories get snapped up and it seems like everyone falls in love with them (yeah, they are cute, and they do wear those slippers like a boss, *sigh*). My stories, like my feet, have a big nob on the side. The toes might as well be prehensile, and that one is curled under with a giant bump from when the horse smashed it.

And that’s what I write. No amount of stuffing is going to get my stories into those beautiful glass slippers, and it's taken a while, but I'm okay with that. Those cute stories weren’t the ones I wanted to tell because I’m not the only person staring at those glass slippers and wishing that for once I got to have something cute and pretty, but I was too tall for ballet by the time I was 10. I’m not the only person with flipper shaped feet. They aren’t going to win any beauty contests, but they are perfect for swimming, and they’ve served me well in soccer, hockey, and fencing.

They are mine, a part of me that I can’t change. To me, stuffing my stories into those pigeon holes is like Anastasia chopping off her toe to be queen. It ain’t happening. I’m just glad that I found my voice before someone tried to convince me to stick my stories into those pretty little slippers.*

So, what do you think? Is the world made to order for you? Do you hate that tall people get everything? Are your stories the red-headed stepchildren of publishing?

*full disclosure, I do have a Cinderella story in the works, but it’s told from the fairy godmother’s point of view. It features pretty glass slippers and everything, just not for the MC. Also, I totally just watched the new Cinderella and I loved it. It was awesomeness.

IWSG post fail

Yes, I know. I was supposed to post an IWSG. I had it all ready to go. So why didn't it post? Well, I got cold feet. I was feeling insecure, and then I wasn't. I wrote four different insecure writer's posts, so you'd think I would have managed to post one of them.

Nope.
See, I'm at DisneyWorld (no really, it's good reason not to post--also, someone else is watching the house, so it's not like people can take advantage of our not being there). I had meant to post. I really had. It was right up there with drink plenty of water and get to bed early.

Those things did not happen either.

I'm just worried that my Insecurities right now are just a little too unprofessional. So yeah. I'm going to keep them to myself. Instead, look at this great picture of my daughter riding a carousel horse.

Okay, I'll sift through these posts and trickle out the parts that are fit for general consumption (well, maybe not, my thoughts have definitely been in the DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT! realm).

The Doctor is in: Dr. Strange Love

And taking over the blog today is Elizabeth Seckman! Her book, Defying Reason just released, and it's awesome. In light of her new book, I asked her to give us a little skinny on strange aspects of love:

Love is blind...and sometimes a little strange.

Here's a few of the oddities of that thing we humans call love and sex:

1. Married people often have similar DNA. No, they're not exactly cousins, but their DNA codes have a lot in common. 

2. Women can fake a sexy voice, but men, not so much. Like women aren't blamed for faking enough things in the bedroom! Anyhow, seems women can fool men by lowering their voice, whereas when men tried, women had a negative response. 

3. The brain in love is similar to the brain of an addict. A hit of cocaine will register the same pleasure response as someone in love. Lust, on the other hand, stimulates the hypothalamus. This area controls hunger and thirst. Now we know why love is lasting and lust lasts until, well...the next meal. 

4. Men burn more calories during sex than women. That may seem unfair, but hey- a calorie burned, is a calorie gone. 

5. STD's rates are increasing, not among the youngest among us, but in the elderly population. Seems those randy grannies and grandpa's need to ask the kiddos for some condom advice when they call about computer problems. 

The Book:

Jo Leigh Harper comes from a long line of trouble-making, white trash stock.

Tanner Coulter comes from a longer line of wealth-creating, blue blood stock.

Jo graduated college top of her class, moving toward a future full of possibilities.

Tanner dropped out of college, trading a law degree for drinking games and one night stands.

A family crisis throws the rich party boy and the poor genius girl together. The attraction is immediate, though neither one is a heart-in-the-sand-drawing believer in true love. But as the summer sun heats up along the shores of the Outer Banks, so does the connection between them. Maybe, just maybe, they can win at love by defying reason.

Author Bio:

Elizabeth is a multi-published author of books for people who are believers in happily-ever- after, true love, and stories with a bit of fun and twists with their plots. The mother of four young men, she tackles laundry daily and is the keeper of the kitchen. She lives along the shores of the Ohio River in West Virginia, but dreams daily of the beach. 

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Waiting, Sleeping, and other things I am not good at

This past week, I’ve been in real estate negotiations with the very unenviable position of not having nearly enough money. If you’ve been in my shoes, you know what it’s like to be a bottom feeder. This whole past week has been like the first time I queried. I always have my phone on me, and every time it buzzes, I jump, hoping that it’s the call―dreading that it’s the call.

This high alert status has led my body to kick back into emergency status sleeping routines. In short: I sleep 5 and half hours, then BAM! Awake.

*sigh*

This is nothing new, but I had hoped that at some point in my life I would have figured out how to make the whole sleeping thing work. And most frustrating, my SO sleeps for 10 or 12 hours at a stretch. EERRRG!

On the other hand, I’m always complaining that there aren’t enough hours in the day, so I’m just starting to tack them on at 3 and 4 am. Back to work for me, I guess.

Taking Leave of My Senses

I went to the coast yesterday. It was spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that I forgot to take a single picture.

Yeah. I know. There I was at the beach in February, getting a sun burn (thanks a lot, SPF 70--You had ONE JOB!), reveling in the glory of blue waters and sea anemones, and I didn't remember to take a single picture.

Sigh.

That sort of sums up my life right now. Every time I think I'm getting my head above water, or that I'm starting to do a better job of remembering things, I forget that it's the kid's Special Day at school.

ERG!

And because I was already doing such a fine job staying on top of everything in my life, I decided to start a new project (because you know, I've been ignoring that last novel for a year and a half, what's another year and a half??), and had an idea for a YA trilogy.

In short: SHOOT ME NOW. Just put me out of my misery. It's not like I'm going to suddenly grow an extra pocket of time that will magically allow me to have more writing time. I'm not suddenly going to have fewer real world needs (two words: dinner, laundry), so why do I think I'll suddenly have the ability to do more with less? Magic?

Yeah, that's it: Magic?

I need a timeturner.


So what do you guys think? Ever have those days where you think the extra money for pre chopped veggies is absolutely worth the saved time?

Dear Cruel world--

Take my dignity and run.

No really, today has been a day, a terrible day...


You know, maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. Today, I paid $400 to have a not so pleasant dental procedure performed on my face. I'm swollen and cranky and for some amazingly stupid reason, I went back to work. Even with all of that, I'm very very thankful to have dental coverage, and to live in a part of the world where dental care is considered important. I'm thankful because we have dentists. I'm thankful because modern science made this possible, and I'm very thankful for bleach--cause, yeah, they used bleach on my dead tooth. And because of that, it's unlikely that I won't die of an impacted tooth, and yes, that is a common death for many people in impoverished parts of the world.

So yeah, I'm grouchy because my tooth was drilled out, and I'm sore and cranky, but I'm going to wake up tomorrow.

A+ to science and modern dentistry for today, because that was some serious nastiness, and I'm hoping it works (pretty, pretty please let that procedure work!).

(and for the record, I think I'm going to go read a book and eat some chocolate, well maybe not the chocolate because I'm not up to things like chewing. 

Altar of Reality

Today I have a review of the Altar of Reality! Altar just released, and it is a fantastic read.  

On to the review!

I very much enjoyed this book. I think I can put this squarely in the 9 out of 10 category. I really enjoyed the story, and it was clever and well told. There were parts that felt thin to me, but that’s probably because I’m more used to the giant tomes of fantasy.

The premise of this book knocked me off my socks, to be frank. I loved that we got to hang out with MC who had epilepsy, and that her seizures were part of what made her powerful. It was a very refreshing take on main characters, and I very much enjoyed it.

There was a lot of angst in this book. Now, to be clear, if you are ready a YA book and you are moaning about the Angsty Teenagerness of the book, maybe you should consider reading a different age category. Part of the teenager experience involves the difficulties of being caught between childhood and adulthood. What this book did really well was give the MC the opportunity to have a very normal teenage experience coupled with the very exotic other world dystopian. I have to say, I thought that was masterfully done.

I wish we had gotten more of the dystopian world. I felt like there could have been more there, but when the book is split between two realities, it can be hard to present two fully formed worlds. That being said, I loved the idea and premise so much that I really didn’t mind at all, and would have followed this book for a long, long time.

The love interests. The problem with multiple love interests is that, for whatever reason, there are people who fall on both sides of any equation. I didn’t like one of the people in the triangle because I felt like those character’s actions came from the willful desire to manipulate another character, and that made me dislike that individual very quickly. I know that’s something real people have to deal with, but it made it hard to care for the manipulator later, even when bad things happened to that character. However, the split world made it really easy to understand why the other people involved in the triangle would forgive the manipulator, and this part was masterfully done (even though I never forgave the manipulator).

Lastly, the ending. I’m going to put this part in a different color, so if you want to read it you can, but otherwise, it’s going to contain spoilers.

SPOILERS. Highlight to read:

The ending is a complete cliffhanger. This book is not a standalone, and there is no closure in this book. As I got closer to the end, I was expecting some sort of wrap up, but nope, it cuts off at the knees. At least there is no question as to whether there is a sequel or not. 

 

Altar of Reality, by Mara Valderran

Genre: young-adult, dystopian, science-fiction romance

Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press

Date of Publication: January 22, 2015

Cover Artist: Alexandria Thompson at Gothic Fate

Description:

Sixteen year-old Madeline has struggled with epilepsy for most of her adolescent life, leaving her something of a social pariah. Things go from bad to worse when she wakes up from her first grand mal seizure in an extremely unfamiliar world but surrounded by familiar faces. Her hometown is in ruins, the aftermath of a Cold War turned hot.

Thomas, the boy that stomped on her heart a year ago, and his brother Brandon have been hiding her away since the explosion that killed her parents. The Lord Commander, now running the southern territories, believes Madeline died with them and the brothers need to keep it that way.

The biggest problem? The explosion happened when she was twelve.

Madeline isn’t sure what to believe. The brothers insist her memories must be of a dream life she created while in her coma. But when she returns to the reality she knows, they insist this war-torn world must be the dream. She doesn’t know if she’s truly caught in the middle of a brewing rebellion or teetering on the brink of insanity. As she finds herself flipping between the two lives, her heart becomes torn between two versions of the same boy and the lines between her realities begin to blur.

Goodreads | Amazon US | Amazon UK

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About Mara Valderran:

Mara Valderran is an author of young adult and new adult books, but she's more than just a madwoman with a writing box. She is an avid reader and fan of all things sci-fi and fantasy. She loves roller skating and movies, though typically not together. She hopes to one day meet Daniel Jackson from SG1, or at least the actor who played him. When she’s not writing, you can find her reading, playing video games, or counting down the days until DragonCon.

Her debut novel, HEIRS OF WAR, has been met with great reviews and was featured on Wattpad in 2013, raking in over 600k reads. The series continues with the second book, HEIRS OF WAR, CROWN OF FLAMES, released in Summer 2014. Her short story “The Austenation” will is included in the Borderlands Anthology and she is looking forward to publishing her young adult dystopian ALTAR OF REALITY with Curiosity Quills Spring 2015.

Find Mara Valderran Online:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads