Playlist for Chapter 12 of "Dark Goddess."

I got a review on Chapter Twelve after I posted it and the reviewer said they didn't know any of the songs referenced in the chapter, so, I thought I'd put together a little play list for the curious:

Melissa Etheridge, "I'm the Only One."



 4 Non Blonds, "What's up?"

Squirrel Nut Zippers, "Hell"




My Chemical Romance, "Teenagers."


Jimmy Buffett, "Come Monday"

Artcile for Raum's My Reading Lounge: Writing Lab: a talk with Lissa Bryan. What Do Writers Read?

My Reading Lounge: Writing Lab: a talk with Lissa Bryan. What Do Writers Read?

"Better Angels" Nominated for "Best Edward" in twolight Eclipse Awards!

This truly has been an AMAZING week. I was able to share my upcoming book cover, Compulsion was nominated for a Wordsmith Award and nor I've just learned that The Better Angels of Our Nature is nominated for a "Best Edward" award in the Twilight Eclipse awards!

"Compusion" Nominated for Wordsmith Award!

I just got a PM on FFN:

Just a message to let you know that your story Compulsion) has been nominated in The Wordsmith Awards for Best Angst. You can check the awards out by going to wordsmithawards(dot)blogspot(dot)com

I nearly fell out of my chair. I'm amazed.

Okay, maybe "stunned" is a better word.

Compulsion was the first fanfiction story I wrote. It's the tale of an OCD Bella falling in love with a shy, clumsy and suicidal Emmett. Edward wants her, too, and their love triangle (and Edward's way of coping with Bella's preference for Emmett) is the catalyst for a rebellion against the Queen of the Vampires, Victoria. There's a sequel, which I still haven't finished (I promise, I will, though!) of Edward finding love with Alice after he turns to her for help in healing his broken heart.

I still love that little story and it's always going to have a special place in my heart. It's a bit rough around the edges. My word processor disliked the FFN site and so some sentences are cut off in the middle. Rereading it now, I can see how much I've grown as a writer in just six short months.

When I finished writing it, it had 45 reviews, which I felt was a very respectable showing for a first story. While writing its sequel I decided thatI'd go ahead and begin work on the next story I intended to post, Written in the Stars. And, well, the rest is history.

It's never going to get much attention because of the Emmett/Bella angle, a pairing which seems vaguely incestuous to many Twilight fans. It sits in a dusty corner of my profile page, mostly ignored in favor of my other tales. But I'm not going to go back and edit it or fix any of the mistakes I made. I'm going to let it stand as a reminder to me of how far I've come and how much more room I have to grow.

I'm very grateful to whomever nominated it for the Wordsmith Awards.

A Letter from Tolkien

Letters of Note: I have no ancestors of that gifted people

In my second novel, the post-apocalyptic one I've mentioned a couple of times on this blog (titled The End ) The Lord of the Rings has special significance to the main character because it was the last movie she and her father watched together.

Today, I found a wonderful letter written by its author, J. R. R Tolkien. It was 1938, and his publisher was negotiating to have Lord of the Rings translated into German. The government asked for proof of Tolkien's Aryan descent. (The Nazis had passed a law that banned all books, music, etc. written by non-Aryans.) Tolkien wrote this reply:

25 July 1938
20 Northmoor Road, Oxford

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war [here, he refers to WWI], in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung [ancestry].

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and

remain yours faithfully,

J. R. R. Tolkien

(Bolding mine.)

How I Discovered Fanfic

In October of 2011 - which seems much longer ago than it actually was - I found a book on Amazon that seemed interesting. A romance with a subplot about Dante scholars, which appealed to that nerdy side of me.
It was "Gabriel's Inferno" By Sylvain Renard.

After I finished reading it, I decided to go to Amazon and leave a review. I admit, I'm a person who rarely reviews books - it really has to stand out for me, for good or for bad, for me to write one, and considering I used to read between two or three books PER DAY, that's really saying something.

So, I started reading through the reviews, and found one which (rather scathingly) said that the book was once a "Twilight" fanfiction.

"Hmm. What's that?" I wondered. I typed the words into Google and my whole life changed.
I had discovered that there were other people out there who also took books and movies they loved and wrote new stories for the characters, sending them on new adventures in different setings, giving them a different love interest ... And what's more, there was a massive community devoted to these stories.

I read some of the "big name authors", a few of the most popular fics. I thought about it for a few days, and then decided to take the plunge and write down one of the stories that had been circulating in my head for years.

My first story got 45 reviews, which I thought was a pretty respectable showing. I wasn't in it for the reviews, after all, but rather as an outlet for these stories, and a small way to give back to the world of fiction which had given me such pleasure over the years.

Then, I started Written in the Stars and the damn thing just EXPLODED on me. I never expected this level of attention, and I certainly never expected to be approached by a publisher ...

So here I am, six months later, and everything has changed. I'm still reeling from it, and honestly, it still doesn't seem real. I found myself on a list of "Big Name Authors" on ADF today, and I was shocked, and frankly, a tad bit disquieted because I certainly don't think of myself that way. "How the hell did this happen?" I keep asking myself.

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?

 
My first book will be out around the one year anniversary of my joining the FF community. I really ought to go track down that reviewer and tell them "Thank  you."

 Tamara Putvin on Facebook suggested this, and I really wish I could go!

Iowa Writing Festival Tons of workshops for the aspiring writer. It's like boot camp for authors!