Michelle Rowen
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
100 BooksI've seen this on a couple blogs and thought I'd do much worse than I did. However, it does make me admit publicly that I've never read Jane Austin, Bridget Jones, or Dracula. I should probably get on that.
The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. How do you do?
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Monday, July 21, 2008
Cool contest! Hellboy! San Fran!Holy cats! (who do I know that uses that phrase? Because I like it and I'm adopting it immediately) Check out this new SHOMI contest that's just gone live.
http://shomifiction.com/contests_press.html
Steven King to judge SHOMI Book Trailer Contest
Dorchester Publishing and Circle of Seven Productions have teamed up to present a contest offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for amateur and professional filmmakers who also love books. Participants will create book trailers based on their favorite novel in the SHOMI series of modern-day fantasy fiction. The best trailer—as selected by internationally bestselling author Stephen King—will be shown at a movie premiere in New York City as well as a theater in the winner’s home market.
Could that be cooler? I do not think so. I can't wait to start seeing the trailers. Hopefully somebody picks COUNTDOWN. It's ripe for a kick-ass trailer just taking the title into consideration alone. :-)
--
In other film making news... saw HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY over the weekend and... it was so awesome! I loved this movie -- best movie I've seen in recent memory. I don't remember really loving the first one but this one rocked. I especially liked the dark elf bad guy character. He was 1) super hot for a weird, murderous, albino elf-creature, and 2) a fantastic example of a villain with depth and motivation. Also I found an uncanny resemblance between the character and a whole lot of paranormal romance alpha heroes. Only without the romance. ;-)Loved the mix of humor and action. Loved the special effects and the creatures. Loved the social commentary. This movie had it all. Plus, lately, I'm very partial to nice-but-demonic characters, and Hellboy himself is such a great character.
Plus, Ron Perlman? I still miss Beauty and the Beast. Vincent was a very different character than Hellboy, though. Sob. Catherine! How could they!!!?? (I still have issues). I definitely need to pick that series up now that it's finally on DVD.--
Five days until I leave for Los Angeles where I'll be sightseeing for three days before I go to the RWA Conference in San Francisco.
As always, it seems to have crept up on me. But I'm so excited. This is going to be a fantastic conference (can you tell I'm feeling rather perky lately? I'm sure it's temporary). I can't wait to see everybody. And I'm spending the three days in L.A. first with the talented and fabulous Megan Crane and Liza Palmer as they show their fine and famous city to this Northern girl. I will leave the polar bear and mukluks at home.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
And the new title is...The novel formerly known as DEVILS & DIAMONDS shall hereby be known as...
I like it. Well, enough to do a little graphic for it. In fact, my main character describes the hero as such in STAKES & STILETTOS which is probably why I put it on my extensive list of potential titles. So there ya go! Thanks again to everyone who helped me brainstorm a few weeks ago... :-)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
BlazeToday marks the day I'm going to start my Harlequin Blaze. I've cast it with the actors I have in mind and can definitely visualize them in the parts of "Jacob" and "Amanda". I've reread the outline (which I actually still like and hope it's going to be a really fun write -- I could use one of those!). After brekkie I'm going to read through the sample chapters from my proposal, tweaking them a bit as I go and then...ease on into the writing.
The beginning part of starting a new novel is really tough. For me, at least. Before starting the book is kind of on a pedestal, all shiny and perfect. As soon as you start writing it loses a lot of that shine and becomes more real and tangible. Sometimes it becomes something different entirely.
This book will contain lots of witty repartee between the main characters who start off disliking each other intently. I've always loved love/hate relationships. I used it a bit in Lady & the Vamp and look forward to revisiting it here. I call it witty repartee, but one of my beta readers calls it "bickering." Yeah, yeah. We'll see. To each their own.
I'm also trying to finish up the judging I'm doing for my chapter's contest. I find it very draining, actually. I've read one stellar entry so far, which is always nice. Most are middle-of-the-road both in writing skill and story, but that's very normal. There was one that surprised me. The entrant's writing was fabulous but the plot was...not. Usually when your writing is at a publishable level, your story skills are at an equal level, but I don't know. Maybe it's just me. All I can say is having your character think about her life for two chapters is not a compelling story, even if it's nicely written.
Speaking of my chapter, Toronto Romance Writers is having a fantastic contest -- our first one, in fact. Head over to check it out and get the chance to win TWO DOZEN signed books by our published members. That's a lot of books!
TRW Big Book Giveaway Contest!
Monday, July 14, 2008
9 questions with Eve Kenin
Eve Silver aka: Eve Kenin is one of my favorite authors on the page, and a good friend off the page. She's somebody I have had a few multi-hour lunches with as we discuss 'the biz.' She was the inspiration for me to write my Shomi proposal in the first place and I remember a RWA chapter meeting last year where I grilled her shamelessly about the line and what they might be looking for. :-)
Her latest release, HIDDEN, is the follow-up to her kickass 2007 release DRIVEN. Both books have gotten fantastic buzz and amazing reviews. I thought it would be a good chance to ask her a few questions here on my blog...
9 Questions for Eve Kenin
Thanks for asking me these questions, Michelle. They
were quite a lot of fun to answer.
Desert Island Questions
1. If you could bring only one novel to a deserted
island (only one!) what would it be?
I wouldn’t bring a novel. I couldn’t possibly choose
just one. Instead, I would bring a dictionary. The
largest, most complete dictionary I could find. Those
words would help me write my own stories, and if I had
no paper to write them on, I’d write them in my head.
But if it had to be a novel, I’d cheat and bring more
than one, but it would still only be one book…The
Complete Novels of Jane Austen which combines them all
into a single paperback issue.
2. There's a DVD player there. What one movie would
you want?
A movie about wilderness advanced first aid with
accompanying written guide. Hey…I’m a practical girl.
There are no ERs on a desert isle ;-)
3. What celebrity (living or dead) would you want to
be stranded with?
Someone who could make me laugh. Russel Peters (I
know, I know…but he’s funny!) or Dave Chappelle or
Ellen Degeneres…definitely someone funny.
About the Book Questions
4. What is the one-line-blurb to describe your new
action-romance release HIDDEN?
In order to save the world from a deadly plague, a
genetically enhanced super-soldier is forced into an
uneasy alliance with a sexy stranger, until she finds
that that her new ally just might be the world’s—and
her—biggest threat.
5. Steven Spielburg called. He's going to make HIDDEN
into a big budget movie. Who would you cast as Tatiana
and Tristan?
Kate Beckinsale definitely has Tatiana’s look, but a
young Sigourney Weaver had her grit. Think I can
hybrid the two into one?
For Tristan, that’s tough…maybe a hybrid between Hugh
Jackman and Jared Padalecki, but with dark blue eyes.
6. What was your favorite part about writing HIDDEN?
The non-stop action. It was one crazy, wild ride.
There were points where I had my own heart pounding in
my chest.
About Writing Questions
7. What kind of a computer do you do your writing on?
MacBook.
8. What's the best advice you can give an aspiring
(but disgruntled) writer?
Finish the book. You can’t sell the book if you don’t
finish it.
Rejection is part of the biz. I had hundreds of
rejections before I made my first sale (and, yeah,
after my first sale, too).
If the need to write is a burning flame in your gut,
then write. It isn’t as though that flame offers you
much of a choice, is it?
9. What are you working on right now?
My next historical gothic written as Eve Silver, due
out in 2009. It is one dark, twisty story. And I’m
also playing with some paranormal ideas, one for a
short story that will be released in The Mammoth Book
of Paranormal Romance early in 2009, and another idea
that I’m hoping to spin into a couple of books.
---
Thanks Eve!!
If you want to learn more about Eve, visit her website at www.evekenin.com.
Eve Kenin (aka: Eve Silver) is the guest blogger today on The Midnight Hour. Head on over there and leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy of her July Shomi release HIDDEN (which completely rocks).
Guest blogger Eve Kenin
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Interview etcetera
I've done a Q&A with Tez Miller on her blog...
Check it out here.
I took yesterday off to recover from my 32 page final day of writing my vamp book. I read through some old diaries and found this brilliant snippet that makes me laugh for so many different reasons.
August 23, 1991.
I worked a little more on my Harlequin. Up to page two! That's pretty amazing. Maybe I'll check it out again in a minute. Got to do what I've got to do. And do it soon! My dream would be to submit my novel to Harlequin, and have them tell me by the new year, that it's been excepted. Give me a huge advance, and get me on a contract for at least ten more novels in the next two years. Would I go back to University? Well...what the hell do you think? But, before my dreams even have a chance of coming true, I must put forth a little effort on completing the said novel. Just a little effort. That's all.
I liked my use of the word "excepted" when of course I meant "accepted." I was an English major at the time, don't you know. And it only took another 17 years for me to sell to Harlequin! Of course, I did have to get over that dreaded "page 2" hump.
Today I want to brainstorm a new proposal. I've written several proposals lately but they aren't really hitting it for me and I have this new idea, as touched on in the interview with Tez.... Brain, start storming!
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Don't give up
Nathan Bransford asked the following hypothetical questions the other day...
Question #1: Let's say there was a seer who could tell you definitively whether or not you have the talent to be a published writer. Absolute 100% accuracy. But. If the seer person said no, that's that. Final answer. Would you want to know?
Question #2: If the seer person said no, you don't have the talent to be a published writer, would you still write?
And it definitely made me think.
Answer #1: I would not want to know.
Answer #2: If the seer told me anyhow...I don't think I would have kept writing.
That's quite sad, isn't it? Don't get me wrong, I love making up stories and daydreaming, etc., but my mind was always on getting published. I also wanted to be an artist, which I gave up to focus on my writing. You can make stories up to entertain yourself in your head, but writing them down, revising them to make them good, and then facing the rejection is not something I would ever want to deal with if I didn't think there was a silver lining. It's hard work. Some of the hardest, not to mention most rewarding, I've ever done. But I needed to believe in that silver lining.
I have posted several very positive things lately about my writing career, but don't let that fool you. This is a difficult business. I honestly didn't know that in the beginning. I thought that once you got a book contract, that's it. You're in. Hell, way back when I thought that every book on the shelves of a book store represented a writer who was able to support themselves financially through their writing.
The last six months have been the most trying I've ever had, and the fact that they've coincided with quitting my day job I don't think is a coincidence. My confidence has been shaken, my doubt weasels have been out in full force. I've been working harder than ever before and not sure whether or not it would mean a damn thing in the end. There's no pay check every other week when you're a writer. It's a risk. A big one. I don't do that. I don't normally take risks. As anyone who knows me can tell you... I like money. And as a single woman supporting herself and her two kitties, money means everything. Risk does not always lead to money. But, I jumped, I took a risk and the landing has not been a soft one.
I had a pretty easy time, all things considered, getting my agent and having my first book accepted. It was the right time, right place for that particular story and I thank my lucky stars every day for that (thank you lucky stars!). Since then I have paid for my initial luck. It's been difficult. Now I'm not saying this to whine or expect sympathy because I know I won't get any. Anyone who looks at me and sees me or another published author -- anybody who WANTS to be published -- will not listen to any sob stories I have to tell. And I don't blame them. I barely listen to myself half the time.
My goal was to be published. I got published. What now?
I guess the goal now is to stay published. Having been a published author for a whopping two and a half years now, I'm entering the second stage of my career. It's the stage a lot of writers don't make it to, or through.
I picked up an old Harlequin novel and looked at the back where they list the upcoming books. I didn't recognize one author name. That means that women who were being published and celebrating their budding writing careers 12 years ago (give or take) are no longer writing. Why? Because they were happy with writing one or two books and then going back to their normal lives? Maybe a few of them. The rest either quit because staying published is freaking difficult or they now write under a new pen name out of necessity.
The key to staying published, I think, is staying on top of marketing trends. I don't honestly think you need to change the kind of book that you really want to write, that speaks to you, but I do think you need to push it in directions that might be more high concept, or higher conflict, or suspenseful. Write a "very" book. Very funny, or very scary, or very sexy. Middle of the road characters or plot do not sustain a writer or her story.
All I can tell you are three things are vital to getting your writing published:
1) Luck
2) Perseverence
3) Voice/Talent/Storytelling skillz
There are lots of people with #3, but are they going to have #1 and #2 working for them? There are lots of incredibly talented actors waiting tables.
So sure, I would have given up if I'd known some seer thought that I didn't have a chance to be published. But I probably would have regretted it. What does some stupid seer know, anyhow? She could be another aspiring writer who's just trying to sabotage my confidence...doubt weasels in another form.
Here's a poem I found on my darkest day recently. Since then, things have brightened considerably for me. The day is still not bright enough for sunglasses, but I am enjoying the pretty sunrise. As they say, it's always darkest before the dawn.
Don't Quit
by anonymous
When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest! if you must; but don't you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow;
You might succeed with another blow.
Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.
Success is failure turned inside out;
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit;
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.
Friday, July 11, 2008
First draft finished!The vampire book with no title is done! It's going to need a ton of revision in the next draft but I'M DONE!!!
|
I have BIG NEWS to share...probably early next week, when everything gets all finalized and stuff. It's been an exciting week. I sound all calm, but this is BIG and I'm very THRILLED about it!! This is probably the reason why I'm not finished my vamp book yet. I'm easily distracted by anything shiny. And this is super shiny!
No, Hugh Jackman hasn't left his wife for me yet (the fool). Something else!
Okay, enough about that.
The book that does not want to end...is almost at an end. Huzzah!! I've written the last chapter, all 12 pages of it, and now I sit at the precipice of the black moment and story climax. Two writing terms I knew nothing about when I wrote the first book in this series, Bitten & Smitten. In the ensuing five years since I first started that book because thought it would be fun to thrust a character like Bridget Jones into an Anne Rice world using a Buffy-esque voice, I have learned a lot about writing and many things would have changed how I wrote B&S if I wrote it now. Some would have been for the better, I think, but a lot would have been for the worse. I think sticking too closely to "the rules" of writing can be as damning as not knowing any rules at all. I guess it's good to know them and then break them for a reason. Even though this is a light and humorous series (or as somebody described it recently as "fluffy" *shudders*), it's meant a lot to me, to say the very least, and I want to do it justice now that I'm almost at the end of my characters' stories.
That actually wasn't what I was going to say when I started this blog post, but there you go. A few words (of wisdom or otherwise) from the salt mines, if you will.
Bottom line... I still ain't done. I know everything that's going to happen and unless my characters pull a fast one on me in the next 25 pages, then it's all done but the crying, as the saying goes.
Next up... I'm going to write the first draft of my Blaze fairly quickly (one hopes). Then back on the second draft of this vampire book for the month of August, although hopefully it won't take that long to polish it up. Then Blaze gets the better part of September since I do want it to be as good as I can make it. (crosses fingers)
I have a little news I can share today...
I'm very excited that I'm getting the chance to be in the upcoming anthology THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF PARANORMAL ROMANCE with a short story. I have almost definitely decided that my story is going to be about Barkley, the werewolf who has a bit of a problem staying in human form for too long, from the Immortality Bites series. I've been asked more than a few times if he'd going to get his own book like Quinn did. Well, he isn't, but the least I can do is give the poor guy 30 pages to find his HEA, can't I? Yes, I think I can. So hopefully a story will materialize for him from my cluttered imagination. If not, then I'll do something different, but that's the plan as of today. The book, as far as I know, will be out sometime in 2009...
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Getting it done
| |
71,136 / 85,000 (83.7%) |
I'm getting there. Not quite at breakneck speed, but slow and steady wins the race. It's not all that slow, but not as fast as I wanted. I wanted to be finished this draft by July 1st. Then that moved to the 7th. Then the 10th. And while I'm close, I don't know if I'll be done tomorrow. Probably more like Friday. Then I think I'll recoop over the weekend and then get started on the Harlequin Blaze that I have due on October 1st (Lord, I hope it's an easier write than this has been!)
I worried that I wouldn't make my word count on this one, but there's no doubt that I'll get to at least 85K by the end of this draft. I tried to go ahead and write the last scene before I got there (which sometimes helps to give me a target to write towards) but it didn't turn out like I wanted it to so I guess I'll leave that for the end.
That's all I have for today's blog post. I want to write about some of the movies I've seen lately, but I really want to get this draft done so I'm going to concentrate on that.
Friday! Friday is the goal. Here's hoping........
Monday, July 07, 2008
Character motivationSo I finally figured out what was wrong. As soon as I established what Sarah's true character motivation was, everything started flowing again. It comes down to this deceptively simple question, which is the spark of any book:
What does your character want?
Well, she wants a lot of things. But she needs to want one thing specifically because it will color all of her decisions and actions. I tried to get hyper specific. What does she want? She wants her friends to be safe, she wants to survive against the forces of darkness, and she's willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that.
Fine. That sounds very valid.
But no. That wasn't her real motivation. It's not what drives her down deep. It's not the motivation that even she isn't aware of, it's simply the surface motivation -- what she thinks she wants more than anything.
So what does she really want?
Well, she wants to be happy, of course.
Saving her friends is great, but what's the pay-off if her friends are okay? The pay-off is that she's happy.
Bingo.
She's not looking for world peace or an end to homelessness. This character isn't horrifically selfish or anything like that. But she seeks happiness -- it's what drives her. It's what gets her up in the morning to fight through another day. It's that hope that at the end of the gauntlet there is a happy ever after waiting for her. It might seem like a weird thing for a vampire to be searching for, but that's her core motivation.
And it's made all the difference in the writing. I just wish I'd figured that out a couple hundred pages ago. :-)
