YA Girls Made of Awesome

Last week, I wrote a post about guys in YA (mostly) books that were just the bee's knees. Today, it's time for kick arse girls in YA (solely this time.) So here are 5 of my favorite heroines in YA. (Not in any particular order)

1.  Remy King in Hollowland by Amanda Hocking. She's take charge, no time for emotions (but still has them…), and complications ensue as she goes on a quest in a post-apocalyptic world. Just neat. I liked the whole book, and it's 99 cents. Take the plunge, people.

2. Rhine Ellery in Lauren DeStefano's Wither. Was it the best book ever ever ever? Not necessarily, but I give major points for different, and I liked her. Worth looking into, I'd say.

3. Rose Hathaway from The Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. If you're going to have a top-notch guy (Dimitri, hello), you have to have a great girl to make the story work. Rose is great. She's strong, and she's believable.

4. Evie from Paranormalcy by Kiersten White. I really liked this book. I really liked Evie. I want to read the second one because the first was playful, and it makes the reader care about Evie. Not an easy feat.

5. Anna from Stephanie Perkin's Anna and the French Kiss. Sigh. I haven't heard anyone (literally) read this book and not like it. It's the perfect contemporary YA romance. It's realistic, and Anna's brain waves are similar to my own. Every time I wanted her to say or do something, she did it. How amazing is that for a reader? Pretty, I'd say.

So, if you haven't checked these out, please do. And if you have, please spill below about whether or not you thought they were super neato keen, because I did.

Now to leave you with a song to write by, "Goodbye" by My Darkest Days. Love it. Listened to this a million times. The album is great. They are great. AND I've seen them in concert twice, and I completely vouch for their awesomeness live. And how adorable is Sal (far right below)? Okay, I'll stop now…

Guys Worth Reading About: Recommendations

I love it when people give me new book recommendations (even though my bookshelves hate me for it, and my fiance is sick of piling them up in some resemblance of order). So today, I decided to give you all a few, and I gave you some that include what I like most about reading books really, great romance because of great guys. Here's 5 literary heart-throbs for you all to enjoy (and for my dude readers, I'll have a sweet chick version to come). So, here goes something: (Not necessarily listed in order of awesomeness)

1. Beck from Jana Oliver's The Demon Trapper's Daughter. AH! I really liked him, and this book. It's different, and even though I hadn’t heard anything about it before reading, I'm really glad I took the plunge. Completely worth it.

2. Finn Holmes from Amanda Hocking's Switched. Sigh. I really liked him. Go. Read. It's a good series, as far as they go (but I think I love Hollowland more, just by the way...also btw, Hollowland is $0.99.)

3. Dimitri Belikov from Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series. I seriously heart this guy, but I still haven't read the last two books in the series (though I do own them), mainly because of cold feet and time restraints. If you've read the series, I'm sure you can guess about the why behind the cold feet.

4. Bill and Eric from the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris (I linked to the first book), although again I'm not vouching for the full series here. I am, however, FULLY vouching for the first four in the series, as I loved them whole-heartedly. I do own other books in the series beyond those four, and I hear they're quite good, but things happened in the series to make me less interested than I was before. I have to work on finishing them though since apparently they've gotten amazing again as of late.

5. Drake from the Aisling Grey series by Katie MacAlister. I haven’t read these books in a while, but I remember liking Drake and reading the first 3 books in a rapid fire succession. Also, I really like ImproperEnglish by her, if you all are looking for a contemporary romance. 

Have you read these? If so, did you like these guys? Let me know why or why not in the comments below!

Now to leave you with a song to write by, "The Difference" by Matchbox 20. I have liked this song ever since I went on a road trip to one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I have just learned the title of it…yay for being on the ball. 

P.S. For those of you that are interested (please be interested?) I'm working quite furiously on my soon-to-be-released ebook, and I'm way excited about it. I announced that I'm releasing it soon here, and it should be up VERY VERY (very) soon. I'll let you know when it is available. (It's a YA paranormal/fairy tale-ish/ quirky romance of epic proportions...no werewolves, vamps, or angels present.)

I hate her...and Bows and Books.

Her’s a profile of a character that I hate. I’m not going to name names about what book this character is in because the character, in this instance a “She”, is in a lot of books lately. You’ve probably seen her. Hell/heck, maybe you even liked her. I did not.

Her typical M.O.:

• She is hopelessly clueless in the beginning.
• In a world set up for inclusion in one way or another, she feels like something just ain’t quite right. But how will she ever find out what’s wrong?
• Oh, yeah. The MMC (main male character). He’s different. He’s an outcast. He shows her the wrong so they can, together, make it right.
• That is, after she has some kind of mental process where she questions her home, her family…and (insert gasp here) even her society.
• By the end of the story, the clueless heroine has learned something and has immediately and subsequently turned into a bad A (capital A necessary, folks), and she can completely rise to the occasion of fixing the world, or at least she can pretend like maybe she could in the sequel.

Does this setup sound familiar to anyone? It’s been a friggin’ epidemic in the books that I’ve been reading lately.  (Btw, I haven’t talked about these books online or anywhere else so I don’t want anyone to think I’m bashing something specific). Now, I’ve seen it does several ways—some of them have even been tolerable, if not good. But, as a whole, I’m over it.

I like heroines who know what they are doing, or who are at least aware that they don’t know what they are doing when they don’t.

Lately, it’s been like these stories are the “damsel in distress” in a different setting. The world is wrong; she is right, but she doesn’t know it; and in comes boy to help her realize that she is the most awesome being ever and can fix said situations.

If you’re going to make your character weak, be consistent. She can’t save the world, unless she has some growth happen. It can’t just be “Knowledge in, awesome out” literally as soon as the character learns what happening around her. It doesn’t read real to me, and those books (not including the good exceptions to this) aren’t going to be on my favorite list anytime soon.

Hopefully the fact that this storyline is practically trending in books now will cause it’s disappearance as people will want something new, but in the mean time, I will continue to look for original people/characters and authors odd enough to create these new beings worth reading about.

Can anyone out there relate to this rant or am I off? Do you like that storyline? Let me know below.

Now here’s a song to write by that I don’t know particularly well, but I like it already, “Kihei Town” by The Throwdowns.

I couldn’t find a video of just them singing this song that I liked, so here’s a link to listen to it on their Myspace page, but if you want your video version fix, here’s how I first heard it:

The song is playing in the background for the first half, but the video itself is teaching you how to make a hair bow out of old magazines. (WHAT!? I know. Amazing, but mine didn’t turn out well, not that I’ll stop trying. 

 

Oh, and to those of you biting at the bit for my "TBR bought and on the shelves pile", I can't really do the largeness of it justice right now, but here are some of the highlights:

The last two of the Vampire Academy series (this one and this too) by Richelle Mead

The last three of the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris (link to her Amazon page)

Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves

The Haunted by Jessica Verday

Nevermore by Kelly Creagh

Virtue by Amanda Hocking (on the Kindle shelves, and don't get me started on how many other Kindle books I have on there to read...like the one I won which I talk about here). 

I know what you're thinking "Psssh, that's not much." Well, in addition to this, I have a small desk made out of books in my room (and by this, I mean my actual small desk is mostly comprised of books underneath it because Book Fairs are a weakness I have succumbed to several times...) So on that note, I promise in the indeterminable future to have more to add to this pile.

Brain Book/ Plotter Plans

Here’s what I have been up to lately. Today, I am embarking on the journey that is outlining my next book. The good thing about this is that whenever I get an idea, I write down so much about it (in my brain book) that outlining is just taking the bare bones of the story and flushing it out into scenes.

Just to clarify, what I mean by “brain book” is that I have this book that is my catch-all for everything writing or creative related. I have a dream; I write it down there. I hear a song that’s particularly amazing; I write it down there for future reference. I read a book; I add it to a growing list in the book (new addition to the book after many a frustration of forgetting a title). If I get struck by a new book idea; I write it down there. I hate having notes every which place, so having this book helps.

In this book (like this but unlined* and with a different cover), I recently combed through it to see how many book plots/ideas I have come up with since I started this book and made a numbered list from it, and the total is 25 (and that number makes me happy because I hate even numbers = fun fact). So this means I have 25 book plot arches written down in my brain book, and now my job is to take one of those ideas and plot it out.

To be honest, I’ve never been into extensive outlines, so while I am exciting to plot ahead, I am also slightly worried. But, I am also inspired. I read this post by Amanda Hocking on her blog about how she outlines, and it seems like what I do, just kicked up a notch. (Interesting read)

My normal process is I scribble out everything I can think of when the idea arises (like a chick possessed, I might add). This can range from a vivid scene that sparks a loosely written narrative arch to a FULLY flushed out book outline that started with me frantically writing down several scenes (like #10 on the list). Sometimes with these ideas, I do a bubble map of events (which is how I paced my soon-to-be-released-book-of-awesomeness), but as I wrote the book, the arch really moved into something I’ll be using more for book two than book one of the series.

What I am taking from Amanda’s blog is the notion of writing out super short descriptions of what happens in each scene/chapter. I read another blog recently (wish I could find it) that said if you’re sure you’re one kind of person (plotter or pantser), change it up and do the exact opposite and see what happens. So even though I range somewhere in the middle, I figure I’ll try the scene by scene method and let you know if it works for me.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? If so, why? Leave comments or emails (or how to’s for the plotters to help a semi-newb plotter out).

Now, I leave you with a song to write to, which I like for the rendition more than the song, even though the song isn’t bad, Dia Frampton’s cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless” from The Voice:

*I hate lines. 

Self-Publishing, Say WHAT?

A two-fer on my first day, I could wait until tomorrow, but I won’t. Might as well post as long as I feel I have some kind of material.

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been thinking about the notion of self-publishing. Don’t get me wrong; I haven’t decided fully one way or the other, but due to some recent reading, I’ve been more willing to entertain the notion of self-publishing. (Even though seeing my book in Borders is right up there with my top 3 writing dreams…I live for the idea of book signings…)

I stumbled across J. A. Konrath’s blog where he has recently decided to change his mind about how to go about publishing one’s work. I had read his blog before when he used to say try traditional publishing first, then think about self-publishing, a notion I had already came to in my head. Now, however, he has changed positions, as he now is more hard pressed to find a reason to have publishers take the author’s money when he or she can go out and sell on Kindle, Createspace, Amazon, Lulu, or Barnes and Noble for his or herself.

Now he does a much better job of explaining his reasons behind this decision than I ever could so I’d encourage you to read the last few blog posts that he has written…Hell, if you actually read about him and his numbers, I think you’d be fascinated enough to stay for a while. So I much, much encourage you to check it out, even if you are mentally opposed to the idea of self-publishing. It’s worth a gander (and no I wouldn’t say gander in normal life…)

What shook my thought process more than Konrath alone was Amanda Hocking’s story (which can be found on her blog). She’s a YA author, which already garners my interest, and she’s a paranormal author in my same age group-ish at that (um, hello…living my life here much? Except for not really, but I digress…). Her selling numbers are impressive, and I even felt compelled to buy her “My Blood Approves” book one. She’s making it, very well, I might add, in the genre of my choice, on her own (even though she now has an agent, Steven Axelrod). Gives a girl a lot to mentally chew on.

For those of you who have heard about either of these people or have a strong opinion either way about self-publishing, I’d love to hear your thoughts so comment below! Some questions:

• Could you (potentially) give up book signings and some prestigious award considerations to self-publish?
• Is the reader being put first by self-publishing (as in they get the book faster so they benefit) or are they being given a possibly worse product without the Big Publisher edit jobs? (And yes, I do know you can hire an editor for a self-publish…)
• Would you ever self-publish? What would be the circumstances to sway you that way?