Monthly Archives: September 2014

YA trends (so I see)

Benet.  His name is Benet.

That out of the way, I did a little perusal of the YA stacks in my local independent bookstore.

  • Most of the writers seem to be in their 20’s.
  • They’re mostly women.
  • They write about girls being outcasts and their boyfriends being outcasts too.
  • The packaging on these books are beautiful and thoughtful.
  • They’re trade paperback for first novels, hardcover if they’re in a series.

I picked up one book that just looked really good to me, one book that is similar to what I’m writing (by Sherilyn Kenyon, who Jake Logan would be right next to), and another about Grim in his later years.  I also got Writer’s Digest, Poets and Writers.

There was one book there that amazed me.  It was a pink hardcover and had a Satanic symbol on it.  It caught my eye in its simplicity, and though I probably wouldn’t have read the story, I decided I wanted a cover like that – but in purple.  Or rainbow.  (Ha!)

The difference between YA and paranormal adult is the age of the protagonist.  That’s it.  The 16 year olds get into just as much mature trouble as the 30 year olds.

I decided to write Grim in 1997 (He would have been born in 1972 or 3).  As long as I place him in some sort of modern time, I think he will be timeless.

 

Works in Progress

I’ve been patterning my brand on an anti-social, starving writer.  He doesn’t like to do social things, but gets pissed off when he’s not invited to them.

Okay, so he’s like Dan in Dan Vs. (This show, for the first fifteen minutes, is hilarious.  After that, it gets cartoony stupid, but guys would like it.)  My kid turned me onto this show.

I think I’m going to have to change his attitude, especially if he’s going to sell any books.

I finished up Scrivnering (is that a verb?  If “Google” is a verb, then yes it is!) up my novel from 1997 about the Taurin (changed to Torin due to World of Warcraft, thank you).  I’ve also Scrivnered up Grim’s rewrite.  I have ten very painful and concise chapters.  I’m trying to put Grim into one novel instead of three, and I’m almost sure I can do it.  Right now in the rewrite I have him going home, and then he gets chased out of there, goes to Salem, meets Barrett – oh, shit, I forgot his name!  We’ll call him Barrett, screw it.  After he meets Barrett, gathers up his zombie army and attacks the Academy to become (spoiler) the First Archmage in over 200 years.

I’ve only so far written that he meets Barrett … damn, what is his name?  Barrett is the guy from West Wing.  I’m going to have to look it up in my old stories.

I no longer have access to my blog at work, so any updates will be after work or on the weekends.  This puts a big cramp on NaNoWriMo.  I will have to escape my desk during lunch hour in order to write, or bring my iPad and try typing on that – but it’s so slow and I lost my Bluetooth keyboard.

I’m looking at my old novel that I wrote a long time ago that I printed out, and I think I’m going to take some time this weekend and scan it to a flash drive.  I’m not sure what novel it is.  I guess I’ll find out when I do it!  I think it’s Hunter’s Realm‘s second draft, which I Scrivnered.

Now, about NaNoWriMo.  It’s going to be about one of my characters that I play online, Sidewinder.  However, I have to pull him out of the context of the game, and figure out something other than his history.  There has to be a purpose to the story, a mystery maybe.  Finding his parents is old and overused.  That could be a subplot.  It’s through Sidewinder’s POV, and takes place in the early 60’s, during a traveling freak show.  Like Ripley’s Believe It Or Not but much, much smaller and with a few fakes.

As always, the plot needs to be about something the main character wants.  Yes, he wants to find his parents.  But there has to be more.  The story can’t turn on just that.

So, Muses, if you could chew on that and come back to me with something, I’d greatly appreciate it.

A brand

I’ve just started a new blog, and I plan to make it daily.

characterquest.tumblr.com

Was going to put it on Blogger, but nobody goes there anymore.

It’s my offering to the writing community.  Questions about character.  Just one question, not a stupid list.  Do all your characters or just one.

Hey, I gotta put my name out there somewhere.

Should I brand it?  “characterquest” sounds like a great name for a brand.  Or has it been done?

It’s on twitter, unfortunately.  And when I google it, it’s a Christian development group. HAHAHA!

Sorry.

I just registered my pseudonym “Jake Logan”.  He’s on twitter, faceook, and yahoo.  He’s going to direct the character quest, I think.