Heather Finley

          Chelsea Handler’s new book Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang came out today.  Did anyone else go pick it up? 

          Not going to lie, the first chapter made me nervous about life.  If you read it, you will know what I’m talking about.  Can’t wait to read the rest though.  Her writing style is very funny.

          Speaking of Miss Handler, I cannot wait to see her next week.  I hope I will make it to the signing too but the girl going to the show with me can’t so not sure if I want to go by myself or not.  Plus in general, it would be easier if I wasn’t downtown when she got off work.  Guess we will see what happens.  Not the end of the world if I don’t meet her.  I mean, when I’m a famous author I’m sure we will end up being besties anyways.

          Imagine that, I read another vampire book.  Maybe people making comments about me loving vampire stuff are onto something.  Sookie Stackhouse series, Twilight, Vegas Vampires….yeah I’ve read a few.

   Well finally I caved and decided to read The Vampire Diaries by LJ Smith.  I used a date a guy that made fun of me so bad saying that I would love the show.  Note, I never watched it.  I forget what it ran the same time as but I had something else I loved to watch.  Plus I didn’t want him to be right.  He did admit to watching and liking it though.  Anyways, the book caught my attention the other day and honestly, once I started, I couldn’t put it down.

          As stories go, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking.  Vampire love triangle.  Hmm, seen that in lots of books.  Personally, I was a fan of the Eric, Bill, Sookie one (team Eric).  The flashback’s in Smith’s book are an interesting way of setting up the story. 

          So far I have only read The Awakening.  It was basically a lot of set up for the other stories from what I can tell.  We get some story on all the main characters and it sets up some town drama.  It got me hooked so I can’t wait to start the next part of the series.

          The Awakening reminded me of The Immortal Series by Alyson Noel.  You’ve got the new kid that is dark, mysterious a from Italy.  Someone like him followed him.  Actually come to think about it, in the third Immortal book, Shadowland, a sort of brother like character shows up and trys to steal the girl.  The main character is a girl that is super pretty.  Popular in one case but not in another.  Noel’s series is more original though in my opinion.  I absolutely love her books and can’t wait for Dark Flame.

          As for the tv series, I am currently trying to find the episodes online.  If someone knows where to find them, let me know.  I only see the latest four.  If I’m going to watch them, I want to start from the beginning.  Once I watch, I’ll try to do some comparing stuff. 

          So, what is your favorite vampire book? 

Not related to book but I just wanted to tell everyone, if you haven’t already, check out the movie Adam.  It was absolutely amazing.  I laughed.  I cried.  I loved everything about it.  I even would venture to say that it is my new all time favorite movie.   My list would go something like this…

1- Adam
2- The Fall
3- Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
4- Eulogy
5- Garden State

Hmm, notice a trend?  What can I say, I’m a sucker for a great indie film.  Although honestly, I can never, and I mean never, turn down a horror flick.  Went and saw The Crazies tonight and it definately made my horror movies I enjoy a lot list.  That would include movies like The Amityville Horror, The Unborn, The Texas Chainsaw Masscre and on and on.  Why is it that so many horror movies have the word ‘the’ in front of them?

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/services/education/youthlit/readalert/index.php/2010/02/25/barnes-and-noble-age-branding/

www.commonsensemedia.org

          Sex, violence, kissing, gay relationships, angels, soda drinks…are things things that parents need to be aware that their kids are reading about?  Well according to Barnes and Noble, they seem to be.  Recently B&N online joined forces with Common Sense Media to provided ratings and information on books for children and young adults.

          My first reaction when reading about this company and their idea is that it made sense.   They are trying to provide parents with a way to know what is inside the books their children are reading.  I liked that the company mentioned that it is not aiming to censor but to inform.   In theory this is a good idea.

          However, when I started to actually read some of the reviews, I wasn’t completely sold on the description being a good idea.  They point out every single little thing that is in the book from what I can tell.  In many cases, these are completely out of context.   In the reviews I read, it seemed like the person writing the review was putting their own opinions in.  I feel like the reviews should be non objective.  For example, for the book LA Candy by Lauren Conrad, they are pointing out a character having one night stands and tell the parents to discuss with their kids what the real life consquences of this would be.  Couldn’t you just leave it that one character has sex with multiple partners in the book?

          Another thing that bothered me a lot was reading the review for City of Glass by Cassandra Clare.  They point out more than once that a character is gay.  First off, I think when reviewing a book it would be more appropriate to say something like same sex relationship.  Secondly, why on earth is this even something to point out?  I guess you could defend it being full disclosure on the book but still, that seems like pointing out non important things to me.   If you do put that in there, why are you not pointing out a well that there is a girl kissing a boy?  Same difference right?

          What got considered red flag material verses yellow also did not make a lot of sense to me.  Using the same two books as examples, LA Candy is given a red for having lots of references to consumer products like phones and food yet City of Glass gets a yellow for attempted rape, inscest, and tortured angels committing suicide.  Do those ratings seem off to anyone else?  I also thought it was weird how they censor some cuss words in the review but not others and even at times just call them four letter words. 

          Since the ratings were confusing me, I decided to look more at Common Sense Media’s website to figure out who exact was coming up with these.  It didn’t really give an answer.  It gave a long list of people and what their position was but didn’t tell anything about them.  Are they parents?  Are they teachers?  Are they a religious group?  I feel like more information should be provided about this group.

           Not being a parent, I guess I can’t entirely relate but I feel like if a parent is going to be so strict that they will not let their kid read something that this scale says is a red light or for a certain age, maybe they should consider reading the book.  It is possible to truly gage a book based on a bias review from a somewhat unknown source. 

          I think this is a step in the right direction when it comes to finding ways to deal with censorism.  It is a good alternative that if executed better, could work to help parents know what their children are reading.

I have edited 11 out of 18 chapters. I am so excited. At the same time, I’m feeling ready to be done. Isn’t that weird? I hear all the time about writers getting obsessive about wanting their story to be perfect so editing non stop. I don’t think that is going to be the case with me. I’m happy with what I’ve done so far.

Still tons more left though.

Okay, back to editing for this girl.

          Last week I was lucky enough to see a reading with Audrey Niffenegger of her newest novel Her Fearful Symmetry.  Afterwords she answered questions from people.  I meant to do a little write up about it last week but as things seem to be going this year, I just now got time.

          First, I would like to start by saying Niffenegger is an absolutely talented writer.  If you have read either books (I unfortunately have only read The Time Traveler’s Wife as this point but the other book is in my to read soon pile) you can easily see that fact.  With TTTW I was very fascinated with her ability to give the perspective of two completely different characters and to weave them together.  Beyond that, the concept of the story is very unique.  I enjoyed that she took something straight out of a science fiction novel and turned it into a completely different genre.

          After the reading a lot of people asked questions about her writing process and getting published.  Those were the two things I was most curious about as well.  As a writer, a lot of  her answers gave me more confidence in my own work.  For example, someone asked her about if she will ever write sequels.  Her answer, which cracked me up, was that if you see her writing The Time Traveler’s Daughter it means she made very bad investments.  She also went on to say when she is writing novels, the characters are constantly in her head.  They are talking, interacting, so on.  When the story is done they just go away.  My characters are for sure in my head all the time.  Especially during the first draft, I would hear things happening with them and could not wait to sit down and write it out.  Now they have faded out a lot since I’m refining things but they are still there.  Guess I’m not going crazy.

          The other very interesting thing she talked about was the process of actually getting published.  She basically sent letters out to everyone possible, got rejected a lot, then had one publisher and one agent respond.  First off, the fact that a book as amazing as TTTW got rejected so much will be something to help keep my head high if I get rejected a lot too.  It happens.  It takes time to get the perfect fit for your book.   The other thing it helped me understand was that it was okay to go about things your own way.  I have always been an against the grain type of person.  When someone told me I couldn’t play a hard song on guitar without learning chords, I did it just fine.  When I go to concerts where everyone is in black tees and jeans it seems like, I rock a pink dress. That is just who I am.  Thinking about getting published makes me nervous because if you read online or in books, it makes it sound like you have to do everything perfectly and by the book or it isn’t going to happen.  Well Niffenegger proved that wrong.  I’m not saying that I will follow what she did (although I’m also not saying I wouldn’t) but it is good to know that I can do it my way and that might work out.

          Overall, I am extremely happy that I went to see Niffenegger talk.  In person, she is brillant but in a quirky way that made me really look up to her.  I look forward to see what is coming next from her.

Who thinks the two plots are actually one? Anyone?

The temple part is 2007 and the plane/not crashing is in 2004 right? Instead of them being different realities are they somehow just different times of the same story?

Sorry this is really random. I would love to hear at the end of the series what exactly the writing process was. I’m just jumping on the Lost train so maybe I missed some kind of explaination. Did someone come up with a master plot first?

So hooked on Lost now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/books/23kindle.html?pagewanted=1&ref=global-home

          Give something away free and if it is good enough, people will want more.  This is such an easy concept that we see all over the place.  A month free trial period of tv channels, free lipstick samples, free song downloads…this list could go on a long time.  When I came across this article talking about the benefits to an author/publisher for giving away a book, it definately made complete sense. 

          One fundamental part of the arguement was that reading one book will lead to buying others.  Sure you can say that maybe the person wouldn’t like the book and therefore not spend money but I think that in most cases that wouldn’t be true.  Why would you download a book that you weren’t into at all in the first place?  Personally, I tend to get stuck on different authors until I have read all their works or quite a few of them.  This idea works even better when you take series into consideration. If the story and characters lure you in, you will want more.

          I really do think this is a great idea but one flaw is that this  would not work well with brand new authors.  If you only have one book out there is going to be nothing else for people to buy.  I’m making an assumption here but if you are a digital book reading kind of person, you probably wouldn’t go buy the physical book after downloading a free digital copy. 

          Overall though, I think this is a very interesting story because it highlights how digital can help the physical world.   It was something that I hadn’t really considered before.  I think if I was an author in the position to do something like this, I would.   Actually I would be more inclined to do something like dollar downloads and giving all the money to the humane society.   Someone should get all over that idea. Please steal that one from me.

          Writing has become more and more of a focus for me lately.  I started getting into a new book I was writting but now have decided to focus back on editting the one I finished already.  I’ve been away from it for a while so it feels good to look at it again.  It is like that cliche, looking at it with new eyes.

          At this point, I’m starting to get very excited.  I just finished editting the first five chapters. I am extremely happy with them.  It is funny because all of the sudden I am wanting other people to read it.  Today was the first time since I started that I had that feeling.  There was one line I editted that I just sat back and said, wow, I can’t wait for someone else to read that.  It was such a good feeling.  Pride in your work is important no matter what you do and I feel like in this case it is saying that things are falling into place. 

          I also had a huge realization.  I am not Angelina Jolie nor am I John Green or Kathy Reichs.  I am never going to write something that I think is as life changing as Notes from my Travels, as well written as Paper Towns, or as interesting of a read as Deja Dead.  That is fine.

            But the catch is, none of those writers are going to ever tell the story of Natalia Rizzello like I am.  Plain and simple, they can’t tell the story I am writing like I can.  Absolutely nothing against them but it is true.  It is the same of most books and authors out there.  Like Nicholas Sparks could never write a Harry Potter book as well as J.K. Rowlings even though obviously he is a great author. 

          I’m not trying to say I think I’m this absolutely amazing author or anything but I do honestly feel that I’m doing justice to the story I am telling.

Just saying. 

I have been a huge New Jersey fan forever.  I have vacationed there three times.  It is amazing.  The show makes me laugh.  The only part of the Jersey Shore I’ve seen is Asbury Park which is completely different.  When I’ve been there it was all emo kids.  Again, amazing.   I have given serious thought to moving there.  I could still see it happening.  I feel like I belong there, lol.  The book I’m currently editting is placed in NJ.

Off topic, I know.