In which I wish I could finish Buffy, but my romantic sensibilities cry NOOOOO.

First off, if you're a fan of Buffy, please don't be offended by the following!

Secondly, Joss Whedon is snarkier than you, more imaginative than you, and on a bad day he conducts himself with more class than an 70-year-old New York Victorian socialite.

What I mean, of course, is he's good. Firefly is my favorite serialized TV show of all time. ALL TIME, guys. I don't even watch TV. Firefly dances circles around LOST, punches Dexter out in the eye, and sends True Blood back to whatever filthy coffin it crawled out of. The reason Firefly conquers all? It has something these kinds of shows rarely do - heart.

Yeah, okay, fire wind water earth WE ARE CAPTAIN PLANET aside, Firefly is never cold. It has a warm familiarity about it, whether that's brought on by the witty dialogue or relatively seamless chemistry between the actors, I'll never know. When I watch Firefly, I'm right there with the crew. There is no AUDIENCE-ACTOR division.

Which is why I even gave Buffy a try.

Buffy and Twilight share creepy similarities. Not in the way you think! TO ME, they are disturbingly familiar in one aspect - when Buffy gets together with Angel after only...seven(?) episodes, I instantly got turned off. Same thing in good ol' Twilight. Bella and Sir Disgusts-a-lot Edward get together after...two chapters (?). I instantly knew something was wrong - this book and this series were not for me.

Maybe it's my background of writing stories where the MC and her Love Interest are enemies/oblivious to each other/can't be together due to circumstances for the entire story. If they ever get together, be assured that the end of the story is nigh. To me, the instant the two get together, all tension is lost. All character-building struggles of pull-push fly out the window. Develop them each on their own, in their own way, the muse says, and then put them together when they feel ready.

Non-descript Love interests also irk me. Angel and Sir Disgusts-a-lot are the same in this regard, with caveats; Angel has a much more interesting past, which is supposed to 'define' him. But both are tasteless, substance-less, and essentially have no defining characteristics of their own. They're what I like to call 'Dummies', in the literal sense of the word - they are models for the reader/viewer to build upon their own fantasy. Instead of liking them for who they are, they like them for who they could be.

And that's not what a character is supposed to be. Characters have character. If anything, I write character-driven books. World-building is a little hard for me, but I'm trying and learning, and plots come naturally due to the characters.

So, SO! Warning bells always go off in my head when I read/watch a work where the MC and his/her love interest get together quick. I don't know why, but I lose interest quicker than a wet sock loses interest in smelling good.

Which is why I can't finish Buffy.I got to the point where Angel comes back from the demon world, and seriously, I'm done. I just stared at the screen and went; "I'M DONE NOW." And shut the TV off. I dislike when characters get together too quick, but I dislike it even more when they exist solely to produce unproductive angst in the show. So I doodled on their faces.





















For the record, I like Spike a lot better (angry, british, borderline psychotic, looks like a kitty, what's there not to like?). I know Buffy gets with HIM, later, and that Angel takes off to LA or something, but I'm physically incapable of suffering through another season of Buffangst just to see that happen. There's a fine line between angst and well-done angst, and I'm a purveyor of the latter. I write the latter. I will not stand for cheap imitations of the latter.

(Also, when Buffy Nice Boat'd Angel (as in drive a sword through his heart before kicking him into the demon portal), I cheered. I know, I'm a terrible person.)

Let it be said I like Buffy. She's a strong, womanly character. All the characters have character (save for Angel). Joss never failed me on the character aspect, or plot. (Though it got a little repetitive.) He failed me on the romantic interaction that slowly devolved to senseless overall angst!


Sorry Joss. Love ya, but not this time.

Baking Bad.

(Get it? Intsead of Breaking Bad -? Okay. I'll stop.)

So, between my new job and querying, life has been pretty hectic. (New job is CRAZY hectic, agh agh agh) What little downtime I have I usually pour into writing (yeah!), reading ARCs (double yeah!), or a recently acquired vice; baking. (I SHOULD be riding the bike I got for christmas...but...uh...)

I've made everyone in the house gain at least four pounds. I'm apologetic because gaining four pounds is no fun period, but I am also a little proud of myself because the fact people are eating it attests to quality!

Baking is calming. Favorite recipe I've made so far? Banana-pumpkin walnut bars. Eventually, I want to get good enough/experienced enough to start making healthier things, with soy milk and wheat flour, etc, but retaining all the taste. For now, it's mostly white flour, but once I get familiar enough with how the ingredients work with each other, I'll be able to implement healthy stuff in! (Does that...is that somehow a metaphor for writing? Is it is it is it?)

Right now, the greenhouse kinda erupted with strawberries, so I'm making a version of this;


















with strawberries! And if there are more berries tomorrow - I'll try strawberry flan! I'm also growing vanilla bean, gonna dry it in my closet instead of paying $3 a bean at the health food store. (Have I mentioned I'm cheap? Because I am.)


As for writing - I'm being rebellious. A lot of people advised me to write an entirely new WIP, which I started, but I ended up starting to write the sequel to my querying novel. WHOOPS. WHOOOOPSSSSS. ISN'T THAT THE BIGGEST LITERARY NO-NO IN THE WORLD?! WHAT CAN I SAY, I LOVE THAT WORLD TOO MUCH TO LEAVE IT YET. I've tried over and over to go to the new WIP, but I keep getting dragged right back into the sequel. Evil, evil imaginary world of mine. Filled with...addictive substances.

Whenever I get a request for a full, (which I got today! YAY!) I get this hot, heavy sickness in my stomach. It burns, but in a good way - everything is hanging on your full. Before I send one, I obsess one last time, going over the manuscript in a fervor, knowing that it's as good as it will ever be, but this comma here is bad, and this sentence is too slow for the agent's taste, and oh god oh god it must be perfect even though it was perfect just a week agoooooooooooooo.

In the end, I send the same manuscript I finished writing last month, but it still feels WRONG. I still feel like I could do something better, even though it's the best it ever has been.

And then I remember the cake in the oven.

Oops.

How I accidentally wrote a YA and why I'm never going back.

My very first WIP was completed on October 13th, 2009.

This is was what it ended up being;

















(You'll have to forgive me, I've been dog-sitting three dogs for two weeks. I'm a strict cat person. I love the dogs, it's just this huge CULTURE shock, you know?)

This first WIP, as you can see above, wasn't worth ANYTHING, really. This WIP had a 34-year-old office-lady MC, and a really Sci-Fi plot. I queried, got 0 responses, and decided to rewrite it into a new WIP. The new MC was 15, the plot was convoluted and dense, and it was basically a YA protagonist in an Adult mystery/sci-fi setting.

Finally, after suggestions by a wonderful agent-who-shall-not-be-named who read the full but rejected it, I rewrote that WIP into Sightless/FEAR ITSELF, and it's now a full-fledged YA and it's right at home there. The story took nearly two years to get to this awesome point, but it was never, EVER intended to be YA.

There were two reasons for that; 1. I was always a huge fan of YA, starting with good ol' Harry Potty, but the influx of Twilight clones at the time had me convinced the only YA worth reading was contemp. I read only contemp YA, and I didn't want to write a fantasy YA in the slightest. And 2. I didn't want a typical YA heroine at all!

I didn't realize Sightless had become YA until halfway through the latest WIP. (Which is now out on query.) I despaired a little - not YA! I can't be writing a YA - a genre which is nowadays discounted as a flurried batch of Twi-clones and Potter-prints. If they're not one of those, they are either solid contemps or white-bread heroines poised to inherit some great power/live in a dystopian world and smooch two hot men fighting over her at once.

Of course, I've learned now that YA is much more than that, but a part of me died as I was writing Sightless. It was reborn, thankfully, with the single-minded goal of doing one thing - kicking those other heroines to the curb. My MC came out tough as nails, vulnerable in ways I couldn't imagine, and deeper than I ever thought possible. She wasn't just a symbol of my desire to see something fresh, anymore - she became a person.

I struggled with the fact I was writing a YA. It's a genre I both loved and hated, but I realized it was more than that - it's a genre I want to contribute to. A genre I want to help shape, pull back from the musty dark ages of heroines who let us down, generalize us, limit us with their carefully-crafted accessibility. I wanted to see characters again, and so I wrote characters.

I might've not done the best job, but I tried. And at the end of the day, that gives me faith in my writing. And at the end of all things, faith is the one thing that matters most. Oh, and hard work. OH! Luck too. OHH! And if an agent loves your work to bits, that also helps, too. ;)

As corny as it sounds; I didn't choose YA, it chose me. I don't think I could leave if I wanted to.


Hope 2011 is going well for you, lovely readers!

Year of the Metal Rabbit and what it means for you kiddos.

I have no resolutions. I am a child of rebellion, REBELLION, I say! Also, the word 'resolute' is the first word in red ink on my rap sheet, with underlines. Right next to the 'loves muffins' bit.

As you may or may not know, I'm something of a Zodiac dork. The Chinese way of astrology is a particular weakness of mine. Don't want to go looking through dozens of articles on what the Chinese way predicts for us? Fear not! I make it my personal duty to scour countless articles released on New Year, and I've complied the gist of all of them here. ;)

This year is a Metal Rabbit year. Last year was a Metal Tiger year. Tiger years are generally filled with financial, spiritual, and political warfare. War is what defines a Tiger year. Rabbit, on the other hand, is a calm, reserved year known for its incredible luck, morseo than any other years of the Zodiac. We've waged the battle, and now it's time to split the spoils.

Expect good shit to unexpectedly happen for no earthly reason at all. Providence is warming up her guns and feeling random, and rest assured, she's aimin' at all of us.

It's a Metal year, so there'll be feelings of melancholy and regret. Metal years are notorious for producing great cultural and literary works of art ( :D We're looking at you, pub industry).

If you were born in the Year of the Rooster, things might be particularily frustrating. Rooster and Rabbit are polar opposites on the wheel, and contention runs aplenty between them. Dragon runs for second place on having a hard time. Most of the other signs look to have a decent year, with Goats, Pigs, Dogs, and Snakes having an AWESOME year.

Each sign has a differing element each year, so not only are you an animal, but you have a certain element attached to it. Those born in Water and other Metal years will find things smooth, while those born in a Fire year find things even smoother. Metal chops the element of Wood, and if you were born in a Wood year, it might seem like you find resistance wherever you go! Earth elements have nothing to worry about in any elemental year, they are the center of the elemental compass and remain relatively neutral.


In short, Metal Rabbit will be a lot better than last year! Metal+Rabbit=Robo-Rabbit?