Brimfire

To those of you who read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight:  Did you like the prologue in her book?  Do you think it was really a prologue?  I liked it, but I think it was more an excerpt of the crisis in the book than it was an actual prologue.  It definitely hooked me, though, and made me want to know how Bella got into that situation.

And today I read the prologue from an upcoming book called Evernight by Claudia Gray.  She's repped by Diana Fox, who was mentioned on the Swivet today.  The book sounds awesome and I can't wait to buy it, but she's done the same thing with her prologue:  pulled out a pivotal scene that (I assume) comes from the end of the book.  It has totally hooked me as well, and I need to know what happens before and after it.

So, this has me wondering:  did Meyer and Gray send their original manuscripts out with this prologue or was this something their agents or editors did later to have that big hook in the beginning of their novels?  I'm wondering if I should try this excerpt/prologue strategy on my books when querying agents.  I guess it couldn't hurt.  Hmmm.  I think I'll go back to my query list.  I've been putting off querying some agents who only take snail mail queries...

I still think the prologues of these two books are excerpts, though.  But hey, if it works, it works.  :-)

Remember these posts from January? (They're friends-locked, so you might not be able to see them.)  Well, no longer do I have to wait an hour and a half to print a book.  Trey bought me a laser printer.  <everyone cheers>  It's wireless and awesome.  I just printed fifty pages in less than three minutes.  Let's test my math skills:

If my fancy-smancy new printer prints 23 pages per minute and my book is 340 pages long, how long will it take to print my complete manuscript?

340/23 = 14.782608..... minutes.  That definitely beats an hour and a half.

I think I should petition to have this question added to the TAKS test (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills).  :-)

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We're supposed to have a soccer game tonight.  It's a makeup from a "rainout" day, and I'm really hoping enough people show.  I'm horrible at soccer, but I really, really enjoy it and it's great excercise.  My excuse for my lack of skills is that I never played before last year, but I really hate being the worse person on the team.  I mean, I'm not absolutely horrible, but my teammates so can't depend on me when they pass the ball.  I'm kind of scared of the ball anyway.  I'm much rather just run around and get in the way of the other team.  Actually, that just about sums up my whole soccer strategy right there.

Actually, I heart my husband more because he sent me flowers from London today.  Very pretty flowers.  It was a total surprise.  He comes home Saturday, so that's great.  There might be a chance that he has to go back for a few weeks this summer, and if so, I'm sooo going with him.  Maybe this time we'll get to see some other parts of Europe - I'd like to go back to Germany.  Plus, I have this totally cool book idea that I want set in a big city over there.  I need to do research.  :-)

Anyway, David Cook is awesome.  I actually downloaded his Billie Jean song and another one from iTunes.  Today, he sang a Dolly Parton (Pardon?) song about a Sparrow.  I was very skeptical, but it rocked!  And it was his own arrangement. Very talented guy.

I've been having trouble deciding on just who I wanted to win in this bunch of contestants, but it's definitely David Cook now.  I love his voice and his style.

On the writing front, I've only written a few hundred words on my sci-fi book the past five days or so, but most of those words came today.  I posted the complete first chapter on my sporadically updated website, so if you're curious, you can read it there.  I like it.

So I took Trey to the airport yesterday.  He's off to London for two weeks, so I'm sad (and incredibly jealous).  But for Christmas last year, his mom bought us two web cams so we could talk to and see each other if he had to travel again.  We played with these today, and they worked really well, but my cam kept having this freaky blog image thing show up.

Have you ever seen one of those movies where the director inserts random, split second shots into the footage to freak out the viewer???  I HATE these movies because they really do freak me out.  Trey forced me and some friends to watch the sci-fi movie Sunshine a couple of months ago, and it has several of those flashes inserted in there.  (Remembering it, I keep seeing a scary clown face, but I think it might have just been confetti with people celebrating.)  Anyway, this blob that kept appearing on my image was super frightening, and it wasn't happening to Trey.  It only stayed up for a few seconds most of the time, and I couldn't tell what it was.  Then it started to take shape, and I swear to God it was a pink beret.  Literally.  Take a look: 

I don't usually do Teaser Tuesdays, but I haven't blogged in a week so I figured, what the heck.  This is the beginning of the sci-fi book I'm itching to write.  Proper nouns are subject to change.  Actually, all of it's subject to change.  I'm kind of liking it right now, though.  :-)  

I might be acting a bit overdramatic right now, but it's something that I do worry about.  One of my fears is that I'll run out of story ideas.  I mean, seriously, what do I do after I've written these books that are in my head?  Will I think of something else?  Will that something else be as exciting as what I'm working on now?  I don't have a shortage yet, but what if I someday finish (and sell - positive me is back :-)  ) the YA trilogy, the six book vampire series (I don't know - I just like the number six), and the 65,000 sci-fi work in progress? What then?  Sure, I have some other stories I've started over the years, but I'm not excited about those.  They were started when I was in high school, which means they kind of suck.  I'll need new ideas eventually.  Will I be able to think of something?

I think so.

I sat through a four hour meeting at work today.  While twiddling my thumbs, I decided to try to think of a new story.  I wanted it to be sci-fi.  I wanted it to be a romance.  So I made up a man and a woman, gave them jobs, gave them pasts, and ended up with an awesome idea that I can't wait to write!  I'm so excited about it.  Problem is, I really like the urban fantasy I'm working on.  I'm want to get it done.  Agh! What am I to do?  Write two stories at once?  

No.  Bad idea.

I know what I have to do: finish the urban fantasy first.  I'll let myself write down moments of inspiration on the sci-fi book, but I'm not going to sit down and make a draft of it.  I'll never get anywhere if I do that.  But maybe the sci-fi can be an extra incentive to get the current WIP done.  I'm a little less than 25,000 words into it (haven't cut out those first 10,000 words yet).  My goal is to be halfway done by the end of Spring Break, which starts next week.  Then I want to try to have the first draft finished by Conestoga in July.  I think it's doable.  I think.

You might expect me to say form rejections, but that's not it.  Though they can get depressing, they at least make me feel more real - like I'm not wasting my time when I'm sitting in front of my computer.  The partial and full requests help, they give me some hope that I can really be real one day.

No, the time when I briefly consider the idea of giving up writing occurs right after I finish an awesome book.  I mean, can my ideas and my writing ever really compare?  Do I want to publish something that's not as great as what's already out here?  Ah, hell.  I'm really having doubts here.  And I think I just broke my New Year's Resolution of being a positive, new me.  It lasted two months, though.  Longest. Resolution. Ever.

Anyway, if you want to read a totally fabulous book, pick up Ann Aguirre's Grimspace.   I couldn't put the book down.  I started it today, finished it today in the wee hours of Saturday morning (and my real-life friends know I don't often stay up past my bedtime).  I even skipped dinner.  

Grimspace is a sci-fi book.  If you don't read sci-fi, try this one.  It might make you love the genre.  It's about Sirantha Jax, a person who's able to navigate a ship through grimspace (kind of an alt reality that let's a ship travel super fast).  You'll love Jax.  She's tough, smart, resourceful.  Unfortunately, people like Jax die in grimspace, so she's fighting to hang on to reality and life.  Mix a little romance in with the science fiction, and you have a near perfect book.  (Actually, the only reason I put in "near" was because the characters go "up the ventilation shaft" at one point, and Star Wars Ep. 1 so ruined that for me.)  

Grimspace stands alone, but Jax returns in Aguirre's next book, Wanderlust (You have to LOVE these titles).  If you want another author/book who might make you want to give up writing, try Linnea Sinclair's Gabriel's Ghost.  Superb.  I'm now buying ever Sinclair book I can get my hands on.  I have Accidental Goddest waiting to be read, and I already read Finders Keepers (loved it).  

I think these two authors are my idols now.  I want to write like them.  

Before I go to bed, I don't really want to give up writing.  I can't.  I love it too much, even when it's hard. 

I'm procrastinating writing, so I thought I'd blog about music today.  Trey and I go to a lot of concerts, and I always feel energized after them.  They make me want to write, to get my thoughts down and paper and create something.  Friday's concert was great for that.  We went with some friends and saw Alanis Morisette and Matchbox 20.

I love Alanis.  She was good in concert, but she didn't play many of my favorite songs.  She played "happy" music.  I like the dark stuff, the music that's angry.   She did play "You Oughtta Know" which is a great song, but she left out "Are You Still Mad" and "Sympathetic Character".  Ah, well.  I still enjoyed it.  Alanis' music always makes me feel like I should be outside dancing in the rain under a street light.

Matchbox was great too.  The last time I saw them was back in college.  I'd forgotten what a good show they put on.  Rob Thomas is amazing.  The lyrics and passion in his music always gives me chills.  I want to incorporate some of that emotion into my writing.  He says so much with just a few words.  Love that band.  

Even though I had a great time, I don't know if I'll go to another concert like this one.  The audience was SO different from what I'm used to.  I hadn't really noticed it before, but at the other concerts Trey and I have been to, the guy to girl ratio is something like 4:1.  It's a completely different experience.  Guys don't screech the lyrics to your favorite songs.  Now, I'm all about singing along, but don't try to overpower the band by screaming.  Girls tend to do this more than guys.  Or maybe girl voices stick out more?  I'm not sure what it is.  Sure, I sing along too, but I know I can't carry a tune so - unless I'm positive the speakers are loud enough to drown me out - I lip sing or whisper so I don't get on my own nerves.  

My number one favorite band is still Hurt, though.  I can't remember if I blogged about them before, but we saw them last fall for the first time (awesome!) and then we drove six hours down to Houston in January to see them perform again (even more awesome!).  Now, that's a performance that'll get you pumped up!