NaNoWriMo Results

Hola! Guess what people? I won NaNoWriMo!!!!! Whahaha! I have to say, it was no easy task and I wanted to give up during the entire span of week 2, but I pushed through it and now my little novel Tiger's Eye is 168 pages typed, double spaced, and 40,868 words! Tomorrow I'm going to start editing it and by the 9th I want to hopefully have it edited enough to send it to CreateSpace which will publish it with 5 free copies, courteous of NaNoWriMo. By no means is this little book my best, but hey, it's mine and I wrote it so what the heck, right?

Bannded Books Week

Alrighty, then. If some of you are like me you might not have realized that this week (Sept. 24th-Oct. 1st) is Banned Books Week, celebrating the right to read freely. Ironically I looked at this earlier on simonandschuster.com and just shrugged until I got to looking into some of the books that are banned. Some books that I've read and LOVED! were on the list. I then remembered something that my 11th grade lit teacher said: "Every great book is banned somewhere" These books describe ideas, feelings, and events that other people are too afraid to talk about. But In my mind, after looking into why some of these books were banned, there are movies a hundred times worse then some of these books that people rave and rave about. On simonandschuster.com they have posted every year Ellen Hopkins' manifesto on the subject of banned books. I love what she said in there "But sticks and stones do break bones, and ignorance is no armor." All I can say is amen to that and long live all books!!!!

Weird Spelling Flubs

When I was looking for a poem/quote to attach to a picture of a rainy sky picture I typed into Google "grey skies quotes" Well, it said "grey" was spelled wrong. (Even the spell check on this blog says it's spelled wrong.) It's supposed to be "gray" So I did some research because I'm so confused! So I again turned to Google and Google led me two a couple sites that said the same thing. "Gray" Is the Americanized term while "Grey" is the British way of spelling the color. Using the terms from one of the sites "Gray" is for colors and "Grey" is for colours.

So sitting at my computer I knitted my eyebrows together and frowned. In one of my books I wrote my character has grey eyes. Note I said "grey" G-R-E-Y not G-R-A-Y. Now, I live in America so shouldn't it be with an A instead of E? Wrong sir!!! Because this character lives in a mythical country that is a sister country to England it is G-R-E-Y and I defile anyone who tried to tell me otherwise.
p.s. I like the E!!!!!!!!!

YA Lit V.S. WAll Street Journal

Anyway, back to the reason I'm writing this post. Everyone knows I'm an avid reader of Scott Westerfeld's books and blog. Apparently WSL went on some kind of rant on how YA novels were too dark and scary and causing teenagers to become cutters. When I first started reading about this on Scott's blog I was just waiting for Scott to shoot out all the reason they were wrong. And while he did do that, he also brought out a valid point, what about the parents?

He basically was saying that teens and parents need to talk about what they are reading if this concerns them. I thought it was a great post and I really appreciated it. Grant it, I'll be the first to say there there is some YA lit that I wouldn't recommend reading.....just like there are plenty of PG-13 and R rated movies I won't go see or recommend seeing, or parties I wouldn't' recommend going to, or whatever. So if you want to read what Scoot (and all the other comments [which a lot of parents were commenting!]) just go to Google and type in Scott Westerfeld blog and look at the July 7th post.

P.S. I already put this same post on my other blog because I felt it was important to put on both.

Queries

Okay, so it's been a long time and I've been busy. I finally just got the guts to send off my first round of query letters to five agents off of my long list. Cross your fingers for me and hope for representation! (My birthday is in 13 days so it would make an awesome present. ;] )

Vow of Silence and Poetry

Big news everyone! Yesterday, Sunday the 24th, aka Easter Sunday, I finished typing my book Vow of Silence!! Whahahah!!!! Now that means I only have one more book to go after I edit VOS. Fun. No, it really will be great, painstaking, but great. In other news, one of my best friends sent me this poem that she wrote for her English III class and I think it's beautiful! So introducing Barriers of Life.

Barriers of Life

By Lauren Withiem

What the world cannot see

Is what they push down.

What the world cannot be

Is what they frown.

What they do not know

Is how much you are capable.

What they do not show

Is that they are vulnerable.

You can do so much more

Than they believe.

All you need to do is soar,

But instead you grieve.

They judge,

Because you are not the same.

You hold a grudge,

And make them know your name.

Your heart turns to stone

From all the worlds dares.

You feel alone,

And you think no one cares.

You release all your fears,

Until that day you fall.

On your knees, in tears

After it all.

You scream out

To the world in pain.

Without any doubt,

You get on the next train.

At this new place

You get a new state of mind,

And you receive an abundant amount of grace.

Which you discover is kind.

Even the people who were rude,

And those who disparage.

Were not able to extinguish your positive attitude,

Or your massive courage.

The journey was hard and long,

And you want to forget.

Still you turned out strong,

And have no regret.

Roadmap To Publication

Hey! Yes, I do realize that I pretty much dropped off the face of the blogging world for nearly two months. I've been busy and lets face it, lazy. But, to whom it may concern I started my publication class last night and it's going great! I'm learning a lot and cross your fingers that I can get my stuff published!