I've renamed the book analysis "Book Bitch" because I've noticed most of the books I want to work up are awful, bad, horrible things and I want to share my misery with the world. You can learn more from reading a god-awful book than you can from reading a good one, and there's something about a train wreck that makes folk beg for more.
Today, however, we will be doing a good book:
Title: Sunshine
Author: Robin McKinley
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Readability: Awesome
What You Need To Know Before You Buy: Neil Gaiman says it's pretty much perfect. It makes me green with envy and gives me the gold colored fluffies every time I read it. Go buy this book. Why haven't you bought this book already? GO! GO!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Pallate CLENSER man!
So ... been working on another book review/analysis thing, only I've decided to throw out the idea of being even handed and fair. It's now called "Book Bitch", where I will STILL talk about the stuff that works and the stuff that doesn't work in books ... but I'm not going to go out of my way to find good books to work with. Mostly because I keep finding oh my GAWD awful books EVERYWHERE and if I matched every book on a level with Tale of the Body Thief to a book on the level of say, Sunshine or Lovely Bones, I would run out of good books really, really fast.
BTW my co-worker has turned up another bad paranormal romance. And by bad, I mean that it is, no shit, worse than Twilight. And not maybe kinda sorta, uh-uh. I've read three chapters, and I'm making that call right now. This is worse than Twilight. Because body glitter aside, Twilight made sense. I cannot imagine this book making sense.
So just to give people an idea of what I'm working on, in addition to gutting the first half of WtBR's fantasy sections (That's all I'm redoing. I promise. I promise) I'm trying to do a quickie on Sunshine, to prove that I actually do read good books, and probably will start one on The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveler's Wife because those two are just as awesome as Sunshine and deserve much shilling. As for the suck ... I've yet to start my review on the first Merry Gentry book, which desperately needs to be done, and I've decided to embark on a massively epic Bitch on the great, massive pile of steaming batshit that is the Left Behind series. Because I found the first prequel for cheap at Half Price books, and oh my God. At least Stephenie Meyer stopped at four. There's fifteen of these puppies, and they all deserve it.
Also Tale of the Body Thief and if I can track down a copy, The Caterpillar's Question. Because that book was oh so very much KILL WITH FIRE.
As for the personal writing front ... I am still of the mind that the drive for professional writing credits is hopeless, as I am not writing Paranormal Romance and the requirements for a first novel for everything else is generally perfection. So until somebody tells me differently and hands me a check, this is a hobby. It's the only way I can handle it, keep revising and stay sane. Some people do model trains, some people do their houses. I do books. That doesn't mean I'm giving up on writing. It means I'm giving up on writing professionally, for now, for the moment, until somebody (with a check, made out to me) proves that I'm wrong. The odds are totally against me, and the faster I accept that and stop daydreaming about seeing my book in a bookstore somewhere, the faster I can get my sanity back. The alternative is to quit my job and get shifted back over to days, because THAT is what's really going on with me, and I can't afford to do that right now. It'll also make writing fun again, because it hasn't been for a while now.
And yes, I'm still gonna try the agent-and-publisher thing ... when it's ready. I'm just not going to hold my breath or wait for a reply that probably won't come.
BTW my co-worker has turned up another bad paranormal romance. And by bad, I mean that it is, no shit, worse than Twilight. And not maybe kinda sorta, uh-uh. I've read three chapters, and I'm making that call right now. This is worse than Twilight. Because body glitter aside, Twilight made sense. I cannot imagine this book making sense.
So just to give people an idea of what I'm working on, in addition to gutting the first half of WtBR's fantasy sections (That's all I'm redoing. I promise. I promise) I'm trying to do a quickie on Sunshine, to prove that I actually do read good books, and probably will start one on The Lovely Bones and The Time Traveler's Wife because those two are just as awesome as Sunshine and deserve much shilling. As for the suck ... I've yet to start my review on the first Merry Gentry book, which desperately needs to be done, and I've decided to embark on a massively epic Bitch on the great, massive pile of steaming batshit that is the Left Behind series. Because I found the first prequel for cheap at Half Price books, and oh my God. At least Stephenie Meyer stopped at four. There's fifteen of these puppies, and they all deserve it.
Also Tale of the Body Thief and if I can track down a copy, The Caterpillar's Question. Because that book was oh so very much KILL WITH FIRE.
As for the personal writing front ... I am still of the mind that the drive for professional writing credits is hopeless, as I am not writing Paranormal Romance and the requirements for a first novel for everything else is generally perfection. So until somebody tells me differently and hands me a check, this is a hobby. It's the only way I can handle it, keep revising and stay sane. Some people do model trains, some people do their houses. I do books. That doesn't mean I'm giving up on writing. It means I'm giving up on writing professionally, for now, for the moment, until somebody (with a check, made out to me) proves that I'm wrong. The odds are totally against me, and the faster I accept that and stop daydreaming about seeing my book in a bookstore somewhere, the faster I can get my sanity back. The alternative is to quit my job and get shifted back over to days, because THAT is what's really going on with me, and I can't afford to do that right now. It'll also make writing fun again, because it hasn't been for a while now.
And yes, I'm still gonna try the agent-and-publisher thing ... when it's ready. I'm just not going to hold my breath or wait for a reply that probably won't come.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Pearl of Great Depression: There's a REASON this stuff isn't in stores
You'll want to skip this entry. Seriously. Just skip.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Book Analysis: Bone Magic
Okay, so I've intended to do book analysis on this thing for a while. Not reviews, exactly, but taking a book apart to determine what makes it good and what makes it bad. And my intention was to start with a good book (Sunshine, Robin McKinley, my baseline for awesome) and then do a really bad book (The first in the Merry Gentry series, whose name I have completely forgotten) and then go from there.
But a friend of mine lent me Bone Magic, and while it's not quite at Merry Gentry/Anita Blake's level of book suck ... it sucks. Hard.
So without further ado, let me give you the basic, spoiler free details in case you should ever want to read it, and then on with the ripping.
Title: Bone Magic
Author: Yasmine Galenorn
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Readability: Look, this thing managed to upset BOTH Sunshine and Laurell K. Hamilton. VERY VERY VERY POOR.
What you need to know before you buy: Witches, magic, sex, vampires, fairies, dragons, demons, basically the author took the Paranormal Romance bottle of Mrs. Dash and sprinkled it over the manuscript pages. Writing is sub par, there are many, many MANY moments where I am thrown out of the book, characters are flat and uninteresting. Rent from library before you blow your money.
Review and details after the cut.
But a friend of mine lent me Bone Magic, and while it's not quite at Merry Gentry/Anita Blake's level of book suck ... it sucks. Hard.
So without further ado, let me give you the basic, spoiler free details in case you should ever want to read it, and then on with the ripping.
Title: Bone Magic
Author: Yasmine Galenorn
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Readability: Look, this thing managed to upset BOTH Sunshine and Laurell K. Hamilton. VERY VERY VERY POOR.
What you need to know before you buy: Witches, magic, sex, vampires, fairies, dragons, demons, basically the author took the Paranormal Romance bottle of Mrs. Dash and sprinkled it over the manuscript pages. Writing is sub par, there are many, many MANY moments where I am thrown out of the book, characters are flat and uninteresting. Rent from library before you blow your money.
Review and details after the cut.
God. Shoot. Me. Now
It's memorial day today, which means it was memorial day weekend the last two days I worked. If Sunday were the only day I had ever worked, I would have quit now and forever avoided this company like the plague.
My manager is relatively new (two months and counting) but supposedly experienced and better at running large stores than the old manager, who did a much better job of keeping his employees from dying and/or quitting. Yay logic. We don't sell that here. In her great wisdom, she has decided we don't need to hire more people. We are massively short handed, and yet in the last two months have hired one person, the overnight fryer who was fired for not showing up for work. Which I think was partially the manager's fault, but more on that later. Anyway, because of our short-handed-ness, the two most difficult jobs in the department are spread upon the shoulders of two people, myself and a lady I'm going to call Sally. When we had a second overnight fryer, I would be his backup and Sally would be mine, in case I got sick or got a vacation. Sally also does scratch, so I would be her backup and the Assistant Manager would cover when I got sick.
No full time fryer means I am the FT fryer, with Sally as my backup. But I'm still supposed to be Sally's backup for scratch because the AM doesn't know how to do a couple of the breads. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that we are SCREWED. Which was proven to me when the manager did the schedule so that I was doing scratch Sunday and Sally was doing doughnuts.
Which Sally didn't know. She says they changed the schedule on her, but I know they did not because I was pretty happy with the setup on Monday. Oh well.
There is another co-worker we'll call Ann. She has two settings while working: Singing and "Where's my glasses?". Ann actually DID lose her glasses yesterday, for real, and also twenty dollars. So she spent her breaks digging through everything in the department trying to find either, and couldn't.
Customers were everywhere. I had to make a late-shift flour run at noon, and got bombarded by people looking for the stuff on coupons, in a department I am completely unfamiliar with. I came back shuddering and frightened. In our store, the employees wear red shirts and the management+ staff wear dress button-up shirts in whatever color they want. Which means, in true Star Trek logic, that when the zombies attack they will know who to kill. My only hope is that I can defend myself with a carrot long enough to get to the street clothes I keep in my locker. Except that doesn't always work on the customers. I will walk in the store in sunday clothes to buy a pint of Blue Bell and get asked where stuff is by fifteen different people between the ice cream and the registers. Not that I mind helping, it's actually rather nice to help, but do I like have "employee of store" TATTOOED to my forehead? I'm in a dress, and it's not even red. How do you guys KNOW I WORK HERE???? Are you a stalker? Should I be worried? Are you a zombie in disguise planning for the future invasion?
Frankly, I love working for this company, it's fantastic, most of our customers are cool and make up for the customers who are not cool, but I'm gonna give the "new" manager about another month ('till my lease runs out) and then I'm probably going to transfer to another store. There is too much stress, too much stupid and OMG the schedule has reached sanskrit levels of incomprehensible. The reason the old fryer never showed up on Mondays is not because he liked skipping work (or not just because he liked skipping work) but because the way the manager schedules overnight shifts makes Mondays look as if you have it off when you don't. I've mentioned it to her and she just says "Oh, that's how I like to do it."
You also like the hiring process a lot, I take it.
Oh well, back to the hopeless treadmill of editing the book nobody will ever read. Have fun, universe!
My manager is relatively new (two months and counting) but supposedly experienced and better at running large stores than the old manager, who did a much better job of keeping his employees from dying and/or quitting. Yay logic. We don't sell that here. In her great wisdom, she has decided we don't need to hire more people. We are massively short handed, and yet in the last two months have hired one person, the overnight fryer who was fired for not showing up for work. Which I think was partially the manager's fault, but more on that later. Anyway, because of our short-handed-ness, the two most difficult jobs in the department are spread upon the shoulders of two people, myself and a lady I'm going to call Sally. When we had a second overnight fryer, I would be his backup and Sally would be mine, in case I got sick or got a vacation. Sally also does scratch, so I would be her backup and the Assistant Manager would cover when I got sick.
No full time fryer means I am the FT fryer, with Sally as my backup. But I'm still supposed to be Sally's backup for scratch because the AM doesn't know how to do a couple of the breads. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that we are SCREWED. Which was proven to me when the manager did the schedule so that I was doing scratch Sunday and Sally was doing doughnuts.
Which Sally didn't know. She says they changed the schedule on her, but I know they did not because I was pretty happy with the setup on Monday. Oh well.
There is another co-worker we'll call Ann. She has two settings while working: Singing and "Where's my glasses?". Ann actually DID lose her glasses yesterday, for real, and also twenty dollars. So she spent her breaks digging through everything in the department trying to find either, and couldn't.
Customers were everywhere. I had to make a late-shift flour run at noon, and got bombarded by people looking for the stuff on coupons, in a department I am completely unfamiliar with. I came back shuddering and frightened. In our store, the employees wear red shirts and the management+ staff wear dress button-up shirts in whatever color they want. Which means, in true Star Trek logic, that when the zombies attack they will know who to kill. My only hope is that I can defend myself with a carrot long enough to get to the street clothes I keep in my locker. Except that doesn't always work on the customers. I will walk in the store in sunday clothes to buy a pint of Blue Bell and get asked where stuff is by fifteen different people between the ice cream and the registers. Not that I mind helping, it's actually rather nice to help, but do I like have "employee of store" TATTOOED to my forehead? I'm in a dress, and it's not even red. How do you guys KNOW I WORK HERE???? Are you a stalker? Should I be worried? Are you a zombie in disguise planning for the future invasion?
Frankly, I love working for this company, it's fantastic, most of our customers are cool and make up for the customers who are not cool, but I'm gonna give the "new" manager about another month ('till my lease runs out) and then I'm probably going to transfer to another store. There is too much stress, too much stupid and OMG the schedule has reached sanskrit levels of incomprehensible. The reason the old fryer never showed up on Mondays is not because he liked skipping work (or not just because he liked skipping work) but because the way the manager schedules overnight shifts makes Mondays look as if you have it off when you don't. I've mentioned it to her and she just says "Oh, that's how I like to do it."
You also like the hiring process a lot, I take it.
Oh well, back to the hopeless treadmill of editing the book nobody will ever read. Have fun, universe!
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Reasons why my book is screwed
1. The economy is killing publishing.
2. Nobody cares about it. You know. Not really.
3. The main character is a writer. The first scene is a conversation between her and her agent. No agent or editor will ever read past page two.
4. You know all that stuff they say about how "cream rises" and good writing is a book's biggest selling point? They lied. You have to have a technically perfect ms., it has to be interesting, well planned and then have something unique enough to make it stand out from all the other technically perfect ms. they got that day. And then be something they think they can sell. See number three. See number one.
5. People will steal it once it gets published.
6. It's not that good anyway. It's not The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo or Sunshine or even Twilight. Do you know how depressing it is to realize Twilight level writing is something you must aspire to? Twilight got published. I didn't.
7. Writing is a financially dead career choice. It wasn't financially dead fifty years ago, or twenty, or even ten, but it's dead now. If you exist right now with a manuscript in hand, you will never be more than a hobbyist. The most you can aspire to is being widely read by the people who still want books. There will probably never be another Stephenie Meyer, and if there is, it won't be me and it won't be you. Fact of life. If you want money, go be a doctor.
2. Nobody cares about it. You know. Not really.
3. The main character is a writer. The first scene is a conversation between her and her agent. No agent or editor will ever read past page two.
4. You know all that stuff they say about how "cream rises" and good writing is a book's biggest selling point? They lied. You have to have a technically perfect ms., it has to be interesting, well planned and then have something unique enough to make it stand out from all the other technically perfect ms. they got that day. And then be something they think they can sell. See number three. See number one.
5. People will steal it once it gets published.
6. It's not that good anyway. It's not The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo or Sunshine or even Twilight. Do you know how depressing it is to realize Twilight level writing is something you must aspire to? Twilight got published. I didn't.
7. Writing is a financially dead career choice. It wasn't financially dead fifty years ago, or twenty, or even ten, but it's dead now. If you exist right now with a manuscript in hand, you will never be more than a hobbyist. The most you can aspire to is being widely read by the people who still want books. There will probably never be another Stephenie Meyer, and if there is, it won't be me and it won't be you. Fact of life. If you want money, go be a doctor.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Note to Universe
Dear Christian People, of whom I am still marginally one,
When you meet a person who was raised as a Christian and has decided to explore alternative spirituality, this is usually an indication that the flavor of Christianity they were raised in no longer meets their spiritual needs. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe their flavor of church let them down. Maybe they witnessed some illegal and/or immoral activity by members in good standing (see Peter Popoff, the Catholic Priest sexual abuse scandals, and anything involving Benny Hinn) or maybe they just aren't getting "fed" and want more, and because their flavor of Christianity said certain things are evil bad and wrong, even if the Bible makes NO MENTION OF THESE PRACTICES AT ALL, they've decided that it's better to be evil-bad than to go hungry.
You deal with these people by being as understanding as you possibly can, and by trusting that God is 1. In charge and 2. knows what he's doing. C.S. Lewis was both an occultist AND an athiest, by his own admission, because he got screwed over in his early years by. He equates his re-conversion to being "dragged kicking and screaming through the front gate". Sometimes you have to go through the wilderness, and sometimes it takes a really long time.
For God's sake, the last thing you should do is SCREAM AT THEM. They're at an extremely fragile point in their spiritual development. DO NOT KICK THEM WHEN THEY ARE DOWN. Be kind, be sweet, be understanding. Open a dialogue with them. Discuss belief systems, why they've chosen the path they're walking and the nature of prayer vs. magic. You might be surprised by what you find. Don't bash their tarot cards. If you really want to get brownie points, learn what Tarot cards are. Talk to them about the Christian themes involved in Death, the Tower, the Sun and Judgment and the value of symbolism and Jungian psychology. Offer to play the actual game of Tarot with somebody's spare Rider-Waite. Hell, buy them the Jesus Deck. It's 52 cards, not 78, but it's awesome, and an awesome witnessing tool.
Accept that they're not going to see "witchcraft" as evil. Just accept it. I know it's hard. I know this comes as a HUGE SURPRISE to some of you, but they don't believe in the same things you do. Telling someone who no longer believes in hell that they're going to go to hell is not EVER going to be effective.
Realize that the knife they've got sitting on their alter is called an atheme, and is not the implement they're going to use to slaughter kittens.
"Wicca" is a specific religion. Do not use it as a blanket term for paganism. It just makes the pagans laugh and proves you don't know what you're talking about.
Do not get your information about their chosen path from Jack Chick tracts. In the name of Jesus God, do not get your information from Jack Chick ANYTHING. Not only is he inaccurate as FUCK, but half those tracts are based on books (books HE PUBLISHED, no less) that Christian watchdogs discredited when the Satanic Panic hit. Because these books STARTED the Satanic Panic, and the Christians who still had their brains installed realized the weight of bullshit they were wallowing under.
There's that part in the Bible that goes, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of Power and of Love and of a Sound Mind." If you are screaming at someone, and if their religious beliefs scare you worse than combat, YOU ARE NOT GETTING VISITED BY CHRIST. Because "by their fruits you shall know them" and all that jazz. Be kind, be courteous, be gentle. Show that you are Christ-like by your actions, and that means comfort, love and teaching. The only time he ever got pissed was when HIS OWN PEOPLE were screwing up.
Thank you all for completely ruining my day. God bless.
CW
When you meet a person who was raised as a Christian and has decided to explore alternative spirituality, this is usually an indication that the flavor of Christianity they were raised in no longer meets their spiritual needs. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe their flavor of church let them down. Maybe they witnessed some illegal and/or immoral activity by members in good standing (see Peter Popoff, the Catholic Priest sexual abuse scandals, and anything involving Benny Hinn) or maybe they just aren't getting "fed" and want more, and because their flavor of Christianity said certain things are evil bad and wrong, even if the Bible makes NO MENTION OF THESE PRACTICES AT ALL, they've decided that it's better to be evil-bad than to go hungry.
You deal with these people by being as understanding as you possibly can, and by trusting that God is 1. In charge and 2. knows what he's doing. C.S. Lewis was both an occultist AND an athiest, by his own admission, because he got screwed over in his early years by. He equates his re-conversion to being "dragged kicking and screaming through the front gate". Sometimes you have to go through the wilderness, and sometimes it takes a really long time.
For God's sake, the last thing you should do is SCREAM AT THEM. They're at an extremely fragile point in their spiritual development. DO NOT KICK THEM WHEN THEY ARE DOWN. Be kind, be sweet, be understanding. Open a dialogue with them. Discuss belief systems, why they've chosen the path they're walking and the nature of prayer vs. magic. You might be surprised by what you find. Don't bash their tarot cards. If you really want to get brownie points, learn what Tarot cards are. Talk to them about the Christian themes involved in Death, the Tower, the Sun and Judgment and the value of symbolism and Jungian psychology. Offer to play the actual game of Tarot with somebody's spare Rider-Waite. Hell, buy them the Jesus Deck. It's 52 cards, not 78, but it's awesome, and an awesome witnessing tool.
Accept that they're not going to see "witchcraft" as evil. Just accept it. I know it's hard. I know this comes as a HUGE SURPRISE to some of you, but they don't believe in the same things you do. Telling someone who no longer believes in hell that they're going to go to hell is not EVER going to be effective.
Realize that the knife they've got sitting on their alter is called an atheme, and is not the implement they're going to use to slaughter kittens.
"Wicca" is a specific religion. Do not use it as a blanket term for paganism. It just makes the pagans laugh and proves you don't know what you're talking about.
Do not get your information about their chosen path from Jack Chick tracts. In the name of Jesus God, do not get your information from Jack Chick ANYTHING. Not only is he inaccurate as FUCK, but half those tracts are based on books (books HE PUBLISHED, no less) that Christian watchdogs discredited when the Satanic Panic hit. Because these books STARTED the Satanic Panic, and the Christians who still had their brains installed realized the weight of bullshit they were wallowing under.
There's that part in the Bible that goes, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of Power and of Love and of a Sound Mind." If you are screaming at someone, and if their religious beliefs scare you worse than combat, YOU ARE NOT GETTING VISITED BY CHRIST. Because "by their fruits you shall know them" and all that jazz. Be kind, be courteous, be gentle. Show that you are Christ-like by your actions, and that means comfort, love and teaching. The only time he ever got pissed was when HIS OWN PEOPLE were screwing up.
Thank you all for completely ruining my day. God bless.
CW
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