RealityBypass

I moved last weekend, which was it’s usual adventure of broken objects (including a kitchen window), bruised flesh and giving your friends ammunition to call in “Favors” later, since they help you move the heavy objects. My friends were wonderful, braving the 98 degree, 100% humidity Houston heat to help me transfer to the new place. I think they were actually reluctant to leave me in the storage-unit excuse for an apartment, given that we could only make passways through the box towers! But vini vidi vici to paraphrase Julius Caesar. I have managed with only 50 dollars spent at Target and CVS to organize my smaller apartment, hang every picture I own and place every strange nic nac I’ve been given throughout the years. (Quite a few come from Jana or my friend Jaime, who loves to find me weird stuff!)

This got me to thinking about what my art taste says about me, and my character, personality and similar. I think five minutes in my apartment and you’d have a snap shot of my entire personality. Which, of course, leads to ideas for defining your characters. A character’s personal space, properly described can immediately give you an idea of their personality, job, preferences and similar. It helps you get into the character’s head to think, okay what kind of furniture does she like, what sort of quirky personality traits might reflect in what the character surrounds themself with. Here are two of my favorite excerpts. I’d love to see some of your favorites, from your own writing or books you’ve read.

Abraham -  Yoda stared at her from the office door, the poster ordering ”Do or Do not, there is no try.” Pushing open the door, she found the office unbearably cluttered and reeking of cigarette smoke. The cork board was crooked, tacked with rehearsal deadlines, coupons for local bookstores, a child’s artwork and a ragged poster of an Orion slave girl. Straightening it, she wondered where he would keep the Excedrin-Migraine and if she really cared enough to brave the mess to bring it to him. Every available surface was covered with spirals, books and binders threatening to topple onto the floor. She picked one at random, finding the libretto for Verdi’s Rigoletto, marked with stage blocking and actor’s notes in Abe’s cramped hand. Setting it aside, she examined the desk and moved ungraded tests to the floor, wondering why he’d expected her to find anything. A lopsided ash tray inscribed “Daddy’s Ashes” caught her eye, and she laughed.

Benjamin — The large bedroom was sparsely furnished, the walls wood paneled in a soft stained oak that matched the floors. Flames flickered in a stone fireplace opposite of the four poster bed, a blue area rug and brown leather rocking chair settled in front of it. The only artwork was a print of a wild foxhunt and a breathtaking tapestry of a sunrise over the seashore. A classic violin lay atop several sheets of hand noted composition paper, lit by the glow of a shaded and tasseled antique lamp. The mantle clock chimed the Midnight hour in a merry rendition of ‘Ode to Joy’.

~Kris

Maggie Stiefvater is a new young adult author.  Her first book is due out fall of 2008 with a sequel following next year.  I haven’t read her books so I can’t tell you anything about that, but I can tell you I’ll be picking her books up because she’s impressed me as a person.  I bumped into Maggie (hopefully it’s okay with her if I use her first name.  It feels weird to calle her Stiefvater, she always strikes me as a bouncy bubbly Maggie type.) over at Fangs, Fur and Fey one of my favorite livejournal communities.  It’s a place where authors and wanna be authors and fans of urban fantasy can chat about the business and the struggles and successes of doing this crazy writing thing.  Maggie’s blogs are always fun to read and informative without being overwhelming.  So I ended up picking up her personal livejournal thread and keeping up with her blog news.

Today she offered a kick in the pants for the creative minded and I was very happy to be kicked.  Go read it HERE.  Right now.  I’ll wait.

When you get back hopefully you feel upbeat about whatever your current project is and have Want with a capital W.  I know I do.  I Want to be published and I Will.  Power of positive thinking and a grundle of dedicated writing time and research.  It’s gonna happen.  Inner demons go away!

So there!

Thanks for the kick, Maggie.  It was just where I needed it.

~J

I just finished reading The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffeneger. Of the books left on the top 100 list, that one appealed to me the most. I was surprised by how easily I was able to follow the ins and outs of the novel, given the fact that the main character is constantly changing age throughout the book. Niffeneger manages to keep the reader discovering tidbits of information about Henry and learning how Clare and Henry’s relationship unfolds without much confusion.  You can almost forget that his age is constantly changing, because the story reads like any classic linear novel. What’s fascinating about the novel, however, are the questions it poses and stereotypes it transforms. We are challenged by the idea of fate versus free will. In the novel, Henry knows much about the future for good and for ill. Much of it is good and much of it is bad. He’s questioned regularly about the future, but he usually refuses to give any hints. As far as he’s concerned, it’s in his past so it cannot be changed. Is it inevitable?
       The Odyssean parrallels are also intriguing. Clare is defined by a life spent waiting, worrying and hoping. She cannot follow Henry, and so she must endure and perservere, sometimes knowing that inevitable ill is going to befall her beloved. It’s a classic Penelope image, but Niffeneger brings more humanity to her portrayal of the feminine stereotype. Similarly, Henry is a classic masculine figure; charging off into the unknown, exploring, fighting, getting into romantic trysts but returning to his loving wife and finding solace there. As the book progresses, however, Henry grows to depend more on Clare’s strength and comfort as his time travelling becomes increasingly a burden on his health and sanity.
       Finally, the novel is a classic love story. It’s the inevitability of two soul mates coming together, and the trials nature and fate place on them. After all, how many of us would endure in our relationships if we knew in advance the tough times we would face? How many of us would wait years, and tolerate that the man we love comes to us at various different ages in his life, where somewhere in the future we’re left to wait while he vanishes?
   And most importantly, it’s an easy read with clear prose, engaging characters and an easy story line. There’s some harsh language, a suicide, drug use and mild sexual content for the faint of heart, but none of it graphic or gratuitous. It all supports the overall tale.

~Kris

As I pack to move I ponder the question… can you have too many books? When is it finally time to get rid of a book? Is it better to buy or to borrow books from the library? I tend to buy books, and keep them forever. I don’t know what it is, I just enjoy owning them. I go back and re-read some of them, and there’s a few books I’ve read until they’re falling apart! (Wild Magic Series, some of the Dresdens, a variety of Nancy Drews, Amelia Peabody’s). But let me tell you, books are really heavy to move! But every time I consider just dropping them off at a Half-Price Books, something stops me. For some reason I just /enjoy/ owning books, collecting them, even if I may never read the book again. I also go to the library too and borrow books, but there’s still something about buying a book, even off ebay, that appeals to me.

What do you think? Is it better to own or borrow? Is it better to keep or do you read books and donate them?

~Kris

Apparently I just don’t have that Evil Overlord feel. Although I would argue Barney is pure evil…

How evil are you?

I’m back from Alaska. Although my joy of having my own car back became very short-lived. In the course of 2 days I managed to get my first speeding ticket while merging into freeway traffic. (A lovely little intersection where you merge and immediately have to get over 2 lanes to not be forced off the highway). 11 miles over the speed limit, bleh. I was too busy watching the oncoming traffic to pay attention to the foot. So, it’s to traffic school… but hey, I was planning on that anyway I guess in order to lower the insurance rates.

Well fast forward to this afternoon… I pull into the parking lot of the grocery store across the street in order to pick up packing tape. (I’m moving apartments, money money money… I feel like I’m hemoraghing it!) But back to the tale. I’m driving down one of the central lanes and a guy in this beat up black sedan backs up directly into my front bumper. I didn’t even have time to beep my horn, before he bashed into me.

So that was 2 hours of calling insurance companies and talking to police. Which lead to “Well a parking lot is private, so we can’t do a report.” Thankfully I had a dent-repair guy in the parking lot who offered to be my witness in the insurance dispute. He works there, so he has had his own car hit several times in the parking lot.

Bleh. I’m told that the car backing up is always at fault, but we shall see.

Oh I forgot! My curse of being “Ms Cellophane” strikes again too! My apartment requires 2 months notice before I can move out, and it turns out they /lost/ my move out notice. They’ve changed management and the girls in the office like 5 times in 4 months so I can imagine why, but jeez. I brought the photo copy and the girl told me that it didn’t have the date I turned it in. I’m going… er… but this is a photo copy. She says, “Well we should have put the date on it, but that’s why you really need to double check this.”

Excuse me? I didn’t even know I needed that! So she’s telling me I’ll owe them 2000 dollars in order to move out. I threaten them with small claims court and bad publicity (I’ve had exploding toilets… suds come out of my toilet on occasion, 2 weeks of no bathrooms and AC that works intermittantly. I KNOW they don’t want me to get started). She tells me she’ll take care of it, but she has to get manager approval on Tuesday and please give me the photo copy. I don’t want to do it, but she swears up and down that they’ll back date my rent.

Bleh… I should have stayed in Alaska maybe! But hopefully things will turn back around. I did discover a delightful use for the stacks of giant phone books I store in the back of my closet. They make great packing material, and even better stress relief as you rip them up.

Anyway, Hi! I’m back. I’ll give the Alaska low-down in my next posts, but today I needed to rant. My mother wondered if Mercury was retrograde, but it isn’t. So I can’t blame Mercury. Any other thoughts?

~ Kris

Lately I’ve had some wild dreams.  Those kind that you wake up from and want to go back to sleep just so you can see how it ends.  Of course the problem that I have with having neatly wild dreams is that by the time I’m coherent enough to stagger up the stairs and grab a notebook or a computer keyboard the essence of the dream is fading.  There are two dreams in particular which I can’t remember the details for and it’s driving me mad!  Mad I tell you!  When I go to bed I half hope that I’ll dream them again or pick up where I left off, but alas, not as I recall.

Sooo…starting tonight I’m putting a pen and paper by the bed.  This way I can stumble around in the dark trying to find it, turn on a light and scare the bejezes out of my husband and prolly still forget what the heck I’d dreamed anyway.  Hah.

It’s worth a shot though.  I really want to know who the girl encased in ice is….

~J

I totally don’t intend for this blog to become a place for all of the silly web tests and meme’s out there. However…this one I must share because I believe it is proof that I have a writer’s soul.

How evil are you?

Twisted… Isn’t that required in a creative person? At least a little?  Or maybe a lot?

~J

I squished my thumb.

In a car door.

This is not an excuse for not posting, but it is interesting as it has made me ponder the way that injuries are described in writing.  Many people write about blood splatters and broken bones and bumps and bruises.  I don’t remember reading much about compression injuries.  Compression injuries are mostly internal and hurt a lot more than they look like they should.  It’s just something you don’t think about, particularly when you’re creating a dramatic fight scene.  People do not usually compress each other to the pain in a sword fight.  However, there are a lot of places where such a thing might be useful.  Torture scenes?  Strange mystery death?  Giant boa constrictor?

I can think of humorous angles too.  That moment when the car door shut and I realized I was being held hostage by the TIP OF MY THUMB.  Just how stupid does that seem when you’re not the one that’s stuck?  I thought it was stupid and I was the one stuck, even if that was a thought that came after ‘I’m stuck and the door is freaking locked!’

So things to ponder, gentle reader because I’m going to go stick my thumb in ice water.

~J

Happy Fourth of July to everyone. Go enjoy some fireworks!