Harry Potter and the Deathly Spoilers! (No spoilers here!)

July 30th, 2007 by Sara

*Note, there are no spoilers in this post. Safely read on:) *

So, you are about to get a glimpse into my life and see how truly nerdy I am! Comic-Con was nothing. Read on at your own risk!

Tony and I, of course, picked up our Harry Potter book at midnight, as any self respecting Potter fan would. But we were so afraid of being spoilered, that instead of attending the late night party as we usually would, we showed up at the last minute. Wearing earplugs. With headphones over them. Blaring music through our ipods.

Of course, we couldn’t understand a thing the girl at the cash register said, but I think we gave her the right amount of money.

I know there’s a lot of mixed emotions from people in the book industry about Harry Potter. Some people don’t see what makes it so special. Some people don’t think the writing’s very good. Some people wish that their books had midnight release parties. But I have always LOVED the Harry Potter books. It is pure joy to read them and escape to a world where an average, bullied boy can suddenly be a hero with incredible powers. It’s everyone’s secret dream. That is, after all, the definition of fantasy.

And now that the series is all over, I feel a bit lost to not have another Harry Potter to look forward to. On the last page, I read slower and slower, realizing they were the last new Harry Potter words I would read. I was glad and satisfied to get to the end of the stories, but reluctant to leave that world behind.

But the wonderful thing about books, the thing that pulled me again and again towards writing, is that all you have to do is open the book again. The world is waiting for you like a comfortable blanket or, sometimes, like a dizzying amusement park ride. There will never be another first read, but you find hidden treasures as you read a book again and again. And again.

And so here is my haiku in honor of Hogwarts and Dumbledore and Harry and especially J.K. Rowling who took millions of people on this spectacular adventure with her.

Quidditch, Thestrals, Scars.
I want to fly there again.
Obliviate me!

Posted in I heart this book, Haiku review, Writing

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Comic-con(fession)

July 29th, 2007 by Sara

Elvis Stormtrooper. LeVar Burton. Giant Lego Chewbecca.

Yes, it’s that time again! Comic-Con!

And here’s my confessions for people on either side of the comic book divide, rendering me an outcast to both.

• I like comic books.

• I haven’t read many of them.

Aside from Archie and Mad Magazine, I haven’t spent much time savoring the often not-so-subtle blend of pictures and words. But in the last few years, I’ve changed my mind. What caused this miraculous switch you ask? Well, I could say I read Blankets by Craig Thompson and was blown away by the emotion and depth you can put in a graphic novel. Or I could say that Frank Miller’s gritty style in Sin City captured my imagination. But, of course, I’d be lying. The truth is… it was Captain Underpants.

I heart Captain Underpants.

It was my gateway comic. Ever since then, I’ve been slipping away when no one’s watching, cracking the spines of the forbidden fruit, and… reading. And I do love Blankets and Frank Miller is fascinating. But I am still in many ways a newbie. Don’t tell anyone, but this year was my FIRST Comic-Con in San Deigo.

Now to say Comic-Con is about comics would be super limiting. It’s also about movies and tv and toys and art and writing and pop culture and costumes and, well, everything. I went this past Friday, and yes, the exhibition floor was as huge and overwhelming as people said it would be. But the day was fun and wonderful and so very awesome. Here are some things I discovered…

• Wonder Woman! I never thought I’d meet someone who draws for Wonder Woman. She is my favoritist super hero (yes, I have Wonder Woman pj’s). So it blows my mind that I’m now friends with the artist for the recent Wonder Woman comics. Our friend Drew Johnson was at a booth signing his artwork and we got an autographed copy of the recent Wonder Woman (issue 7) and a sketchbook from him. He’s a great guy and a fantastic artist. His wife Karen (who has an equally cool job, working as an animator for the Simpsons) was also there at a booth, but we missed her.

• The ancient secret of the art of webcomics was revealed! Scott Kurtz, who writes PVP, a webcomic, and Robert Khoo, the business manager for Penny Arcade, another great webcomic, let us peek inside their brains for an hour. The audience shouted out ideas for great comic themes (A garbage dump! A chili dog stand! A casino!) and on the spot Scott and Robert invented a new ‘comic’ and business strategy. They scribbled all over the whiteboard, threw witty banter back and forth, and generally showed the artistic and marketing process of getting a webcomic off the ground. It was fun, inspiring, and extremely informative.

• Fomato. I checked out an awesome booth, ran by a new friend of mine. She creates unique and bizarrely funny greeting cards and buttons (of which I, of course, bought 5). The combo of extremely cute characters paired with wonderfully outlandish text was brilliant.

•  Neil Gaiman doesn’t get writers block. Here’s his belief and one I happen to agree with. Writer’s block is just a fancy way of saying you’re stuck. You’re having a problem that you don’t know how to solve. Or you don’t know what happens next, so you can’t go forward. This is currently happening to me in a revision, so I appreciated his comments. To get unstuck, he usually has more than one project going at a time, so that he can switch gears easily, and give himself space to work the problem out. He also says, just don’t let yourself do anything else. You can write or sit there and do nothing, but you can’t read or watch tv or anything else (he credited this is advice to Daniel Pinkwater… one of my FAVORITE writers).

I also discovered $8 sandwiches, mean security guards, and a new meaning for claustrophobia, but I still wish I’d gone for more than one day. Sigh… I can’t wait till next year.

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Like a Drive-in Movie… Without the Cars, and with Aliens!

July 19th, 2007 by Sara

Late one night, while cursing my inability to get to sleep and hopelessly roaming the interwebs, I ran across Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the top 100 sci-fi movies. Sitting alone in the dark at 3 in the morning suddenly seemed like a lot more fun. The list was great! Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure snuggled up irreverently with Bladerunner and Star Wars. And defining classics like Metropolis were not left out in the cold. And so, in the dark of night, in the stillness that creeps over the world at witching hour, in the chill blackness that freezes a man’s soul… oh, forgot where I was going for a sec. Ah yes, and so, I had an idea of Greatness.

I convinced Tony, with one of my many phrases that start with, “so, I had this idea…”, that it would be great to see all 100 movies. Tony was in the spirit of things and we decided to throw a party once a month to watch them, starting with number 100. Thus SCI-FI 100 was born!

We don’t let a little thing, like the fact that it’ll take over 8 years to watch all of these movies at a rate of 1 a month, stop us. We’re not easily intimidated! Last night was our inaugural movie, Escape From Planet of the Apes. And to add a little festiveness, we watched it outside, in our backyard with a projector against a carport. It turned out beautifully. Laying outside on blankets and fluffy pillows is definitely the way movies were meant to be watched.

I won’t say anything about the art of storytelling here. Campy 70’s music, crazed gorillas, and a monkey shopping spree in Beverly Hills definitely made this movie a good watch. But it was much more of a laugh than anything of substance. But that is what makes the sci-fi genre great.

So thanks to all who made the first SCI-FI 100 happen! I can’t wait for the next one. And the next. And the next.

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When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie….

July 13th, 2007 by Sara

HaikuReview: Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Cold, hungry, and scared,
I shivered on my plush couch.
Fully transported.

It’ s impossible to leave this book at just a HaikuReview. I read the story pretty much straight through in one day, staying up until 3 in the morning because there was no possible way that I couldn’t finish reading it. But it was more than just a gripping read, it did what all books strive to do. It made you live the story.

As I personally hate spoilers, I will desperately strive to give away no more about this book than the jacket flap does. Actually, since I try not to read those, I’ll try to give away much less than that. Mostly, I want to talk about the ability to truly draw a reader into a world, engaging all their senses, emotions, and being.

As the title reveals, in this book, life is altered from the reality that we know. The characters are thrust into a survival situation. I’ve always loved survival books, from the first time I read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen in 6th grade. The way people react when challenged has always made me wonder how I would react. Would I be brave? Scared? Would I crumble under pressure or learn to be as resourceful as the characters? I love how ingenious characters become. How lonely. And ultimately, how determined. But back to the topic.

Susan Beth Pfeffer manages to cocoon you in her world, wrapping layer upon layer, until you can no longer escape the reality she creates. And you don’t want to. As I read this book, I grew hungry and cold. I started thinking about how many canned goods I had on my shelf. How much water was available to me. But even while feeling this, I was exhilarated by the challenge of the situation, my mind whirled, thinking what would I ransack from the grocery store in an emergency.

I’ve been trying to understand how Pfeffer accomplished this total absorption of my world. When I paused from my reading to take the dogs out or eat dinner with Tony, I would look around my whole and plentiful life in wonder. It hadn’t changed. There was still food in the cabinets.

I think the key, aside from good writing, is that Pfeffer eases us subtly into her world. In the beginning we see the life of a normal teenage girl. If I hadn’t seen the cover or scanned the back, I’d have no idea something bad was going to happen. This is so different from the usual approach, with early foreshadowing to warn us, ‘hold onto your hats’. It allowed me to sink into everyday with the characters, to trust them, to believe their lives. Then when things change, it is also subtle, inching the rug out from under us. Pfeffer brings on chaos so slowly that we don’t even recognize it until we are surrounded. By then we’re completely committed. There’s no turning your back.

You can only go forward, and the character makes you want to. You almost never feel depressed or hopeless. You want to survive. To forge on.

What Pfeffer does is so difficult that I’ve only experienced it a few times in my reading life. I deeply appreciate her careful storytelling. I hope that one day, I will be able to draw people in with the same totality that she does. Three cheers for Life As We Knew It.

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Lemonade Mouth

July 6th, 2007 by Sara

HaikuReview: Lemonade Mouth by Mark Peter Hughes

Sweet Tangy-licious
Strum by strum, cold cup by cup
Rebels juice up life.

 

 

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An act of courage

July 6th, 2007 by Sara

If writing is an act of faith, then revising is an act of courage. You have to sit down with what you’ve written, look it in the eye, and admit it isn’t everything you hoped it would be. Worse than that, you can’t just walk quickly past your mistakes, holding your nose. You have to talk to them.

You buy them coffee and ask them how they’re doing, all the while cringing at their big, bulbous nose, their hunched shoulders, their crossed eyes. ‘What did I do wrong?’ you think to yourself, as they bather on about wanting a bigger part, asking ‘was there maybe a chance they could kiss the heroine at the end of the book?’, confessing how late at night, they lie in bed staring at the ceiling, knowing with a horrible certainty that there must be more to life than this.

And there is more to life. You know it. Your critique group knows it. Worst of all your characters know it. So what, Dear Author, are you going to do about it?

Here’s the scary part. Your story may not be perfect… but it could always be worse. If you reach in and touch up a character here, tweak a plot twist there, there’s no guarantee it won’t all collapse in on itself. You need an act of courage.

So you take a deep breath and get out the pliers. You take the kinks out of one character, you add them to another. You have to be completely honest with yourself here, not have any favorites. But most importantly, you have to believe that you are making it better.

But, when you open the door to honesty, in walks the creativity killer. The editor in your mind shows up uninvited, red pen in hand, eager to get started. It tells you that, while you’re being honest with yourself, you might as well admit that your story is crap and you are making it crappier. It tells you that you’ll never get this published. You’ll never be able to fix this mess.

But you can’t listen. Like a not-so-sweetly singing siren, this will drive you onto the rocks. Honesty works both ways. As you admit the flaws of your work, you must also admit its strengths.

That mistake you were talking to might look all wrong with a hunched back, but the enormous nose is actually perfect. Only by looking at what is working, accidentally or purposefully, in your story can you make more of it work.

So take courage. Get out that chisel. Even a jackhammer if you need to. But not the wrecking ball. Honestly, you are better than that.

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Dragonsong

July 4th, 2007 by Sara

HaikuReview: Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey (Isn’t this cover art great? You gotta love the library!)

Traditions can suck.
But even old ways can change,
If you have Dragons.

All I have to say is: ‘klah.’ Yes. If you’ve ever read any of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Klah is the Pernese word for the hot, caffeinated beverage people drink in the morning. Can anyone say Coffee?

Klah is the embodiment of all that is good and bad in fantasy/sci-fi books for me. The wonderful complexity of building new worlds and the risk of creating new ‘fantasy’ speak for familiar concepts. I have a love/hate relationship with klah.

I’ve been rereading the beloved, and truly wonderful Pern books. I remembered them for their strong heroines who bucked convention. But I have to say I was shocked when I read the first book, Dragonflight.

Lessa, the main character in Dragonflight, is a very strong woman, but she also lets herself be bullied. More than that, she lets the weyr leader (dragon boss), treat her roughly and condescendingly. Often. I feel torn about this. On one hand, Lessa thwarts convention and pretty much does what she wants, even if it’s ‘not allowed.’ On the other hand she lets herself be treated semi-badly without much of a negative reaction.

It got me thinking about how to believably portray strong women in repressed societies. I mean, if Lessa just said, ‘Screw you! I can do whatever I want,” then we, as readers, probably wouldn’t buy it. That’s the thing about traditional society, it’s hard to go against convention.

But I wanted Lessa to recognize that she was being treated unfairly or wrongly. I wanted her to be internally outraged by her treatment, even if she didn’t do anything about it. I realize that it was a different time when Anne McCaffrey was writing this (1968), but it was still difficult for me to accept.

But by the time I got to Dragonsong, I was relieved. The female characters are much stronger in this third Pern book. Dragonsong is probably my favorite of Anne McCaffrey’s novels, and after reading it, I felt more confident in the world of Pern. Perhaps, Anne McCaffrey was just getting into her stride with the first 2 books.

Despite their possible flaws, Anne McCaffrey’s books are awesome and it has been wonderful to read them again. They feel reassuringly familiar to me and are a perfect route for escaping reality. Plus, DRAGONS! I heart dragons!

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Looking for Alaska

July 2nd, 2007 by Sara

Review of Looking for Alaska by John Green

Artful labyrinth,
Leading to the ‘Great Perhaps?’
Leads to a good read.

 

 

 

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Haiku Reviews

July 2nd, 2007 by Sara

I’ve decided to keep track of the books I’m reading. And, you Dear Reader, can follow along at home! I considered doing one word reviews, but I didn’t think I was really that pithy. So I’ve decided to create Haiku Reviews.

3 not-so-eloquent lines about the book I’ve just finished. The books will be mostly young adult or middle grade books, since that’s what I write. Occasionally, an adult book or a picture book might sneak in there though. I cannot promise greatness, but at least it’ll be brief!

You’ll be able to check out all the books I’ve been reading in the archive under the Category “Haiku Review (or What’s Sara reading now?)” Also, if I really like the book, I’ll  put it in the category “I heart this book.” That way if you ever want a book recommendation you can go to the Archive and select that category.

Make sure to add your own haikus about the book or even non-poetic comments. And now without further ado…. Sara’s First Haiku Review!!!!

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Jollification

July 2nd, 2007 by Sara

In honor of my first real blog post, Tony (evil genius) and I renovated my website. Fueled by Dr. Pepper and Pirate’s Booty, we slaved away until the wee hours, perfecting it just for you, Dear Reader.

Among the phenomenal new features are:

• a ‘Links’ page, which is still a work-in-progress.
• an ‘Archive’ for past Blog entries.
• new pictures that can be viewed in modern 2D format!

We also spruced up the look of the page. I spent 4 hours remaking the ‘word tree’ and discovered some great words in the process. My favorite is ‘jollification’. As in, “Go git your tambourine and sum moonshine and we’ll have us some jollification!”

So, I hope y’all enjoy it. We’re still adding a few things, including ‘Squelchy the Book Snail.’ So make sure you check back for all the news that’s unfit to print.

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