Flash Fiction Friday - Azure

Rewrites for Blood Promise DONE! I'm kind of in a limbo state now, querying agents while planning how to tackle Neverland all over again.

So in an attempt to get back into the Neverland groove, this week's short story is inspired by Peter Pan,

This pretty merman artwork: 

And, okay, this:

Is he rocking that blue hair or what! And on a sidenote, SUPER JUNIOR IS BACK WITH THEIR 7TH ALBUM!!!

*leaves to fangirl*

*gross sobbing*

*supersonic screeching*

*incessant self-fanning*

*spazzing*

*more spazzing*

*swooning*

*more swooning*

*faints*

...

...

...

Ahem.

Okay I'm done.

And now, here is this week's flash fiction.

*

Azure


She had seen the boy with blue hair from somewhere.

At first, she thought she was dreaming. Or a hallucination. It had been a straight week of interrupted sleep and groggy eye-rubbing. People saw worse things when they ran on too little sleep.

But the boy seemed real enough. His features were fine, like they were painted the strong planes of his face with clean brush strokes. Bowed lips, arched brows, a narrow slope of the nose.

Definitely her imagination.

She could reach out and run a finger down, since he was just lying there with his eyes closed (asleep?), is azure hair fanning out from beneath his head. But she curled her fingers into her palm and whispered instead, "Are you really asleep?"

"If I were asleep, what would you have done?" His eyelids slid open and he sat up. Every movement he made was deliberate and fluid.

His eyes, clear, wide pools the soft fawn colour of a jay's wing, revealed nothing of his age. They were boy and man, dreams and laughter, wistful and playful, sad and bright all at once. She found herself staring and took a step back.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Old enough."

"What does that mean?"

"It means growing up is over-rated. We are all as young as we want to be."

"So how old are you?" she huffed.

"You seem very preoccupied about age."

"I just want to know how old is old enough."

"Old for what?"

"Old enough to stop caring."

He fell very silent. Ran a hand through his rippling, azure hair. She wanted to do the same, wondered if it smelled of the sea.

"There is a place," he said at length, "where the caring stops for a while."

He told her about lands too far away for her to imagine, about feisty girls who fought pirates and wore feathers in their hair. He told her about the men with smiles as bright as the knives they carried and voices as smooth as their coats. He told her about the mermaids with their flashy tails and fairies with their glittery wings. He told her about the castaway ship and the secret cave next to the lagoon.

"But those are just stories," she said when he was through.

"Some stories are real, though. You lived in them once."

So she did know him from somewhere. She knew him from the tales she had heard and the ones he told, from the ones he had taken her to. She knew him way back when he was just a boy no older than twelve, standing at her bedroom window. He told her he knew a place they could go where they didn't have to worry about snipped shadows or growing up.

And back then, she had believed him. Back then, she was wrong. But that was the thing about the blue-haired boy. You wanted so badly to believe him, to believe in him.

She believed him then and she believed him now. She was sure she always would.

He smiled. Because he knew. There were children who never grew up, and those were the only ones he trusted.

Book Review: Fangirl

Remember how excited I was to finally get started on Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell?

This is what you get when you buy into all the hype before reading a book.

I'd heard SO many good things about this book and this author. Two of Rowell's books had topped the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2013, and there were so many five-star reviews for Fangirl.

But while I found the book entertaining enough, I couldn't help but feel a little let down.


The Lowdown

Fangirl is about this introverted girl, Cath, whose twin sister Wren starts to drift away from her after as soon as they start college. While Wren is out partying and drinking herself silly, Cath presses on with her super popular fanfiction about the Simon Snow books (the equivalent of the Harry Potter series). There isn't much of an overarching narrative thread. It's just like a chronicle of Cath's life as she goes through college, gradually sticks her head out of her hermit hole and meet people, get a boyfriend, and explain why fanfic is legitimate fiction to her Creative Writing professor.


The Verdict

The book wasn't terrible. Some parts were really good, such as the Simon Snow bits (I was far more interested in reading about Simon Snow the magician and his nemesis Baz than Cath's relationship drama), and the strained relationship between Cath and her mother (wow, that one got very close to home, I'll give you that). But the parts I wish Rowell had explored were kind of underdeveloped. In the end, Cath's mother just sort of disappeared towards the story. I really wanted to see some kind of emotional outburst or denouement between Cath and her mom, but the latter just faded out of the story to let the romance take over.


The Romance 

And speaking of the romance, I seriously thought it was meant to be satirical at first. The way Cath and Levi (her roommate's boyfriend, whom her roommate two-timed, so that makes it okay for Cath and Levi to get together) fawn over each other. Cath is all up in his face, kissing his jaw, his chin, his nose, his lips, and they're always going on about how gorgeous and adorable each other is and how much they miss each other.



I mean, I get that you're infatuated, but do people seriously go googly-eyed all. the. time. about their partners? Even if they do, does that fawning need to take up practically half the book? I found myself skipping the parts where they are all over each other, and more than once I wondered if Rowell was being serious or satirical about the whole YA/NA romance genre.


The Dialogue

I actually really liked the dialogue. It was one of the better qualities of the book. It felt natural and there were funny bits like this:

“You look ridiculous,” Wren said.
“What?”
“That shirt.” It was a Hello Kitty shirt from eighth or ninth grade. Hello Kitty dressed as a superhero. It said SUPER CAT on the back, and Wren had added an H with fabric paint. The shirt was cropped too short to begin with, and it didn’t really fit anymore. Cath pulled it down self-consciously.
“Cath!” her dad shouted from downstairs. “Phone.”
Cath picked up her cell phone and looked at it.
“He must mean the house phone,” Wren said.
“Who calls the house phone?”
“Probably 2005. I think it wants its shirt back.” 

I can just imagine this being read out in play-writing class (miss you guys!) and getting some laughs.

And then there are some bright moments like this one between Cath and her dad:

“Isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?"
"It sets a dangerous precedent."
"For avoiding pain?"
"For avoiding life.” 

But then there's semi-annoying banter like this:

“What if I promise not to touch you?"
"Cath laughed. "Now I have zero incentive to come."
"What if I promise to let you touch me first?"
"Are you kidding? I'm the untrustworthy person in this relationship. I'm all hands."
"I've seen no evidence of that, Cath."
"In my head, I'm all hands."
"I want to live in your head.” 

And sappy moments like this:

“You're beautiful," she said.
"That's you."
"Don't argue with me. You're beautiful.” 

And descriptions like this:

“Cath couldn't stop thinking about Levi and his ten thousand smiles.” 

“His mouth was small, but bowed. Like a doll's. She wondered if he had trouble opening it wide enough to eat apples.” 




The Conflict

Everything was very la-di-da and smooth-sailing for Cath. Sure, she had a writing buddy who practically stole her story and a writing professor who gave her a bad grade because she submitted fanfic for an assignment (duh) and a sister who kept getting into trouble and expecting her to clean up after her and a mom who suddenly wanted contact with them. But everything felt kind of random and thrown together. I get that it mimics real life, since there's no "overarching narrative thread" in reality, but it felt like Rowell smoothed these little issues over very easily.

The biggest challenge in school for Cath was ... eating in the dining hall. Seriously, she kept a stash of energy bars so she wouldn't have to eat alone in the dining hall. I get that, I really do. But I wanted to know more about her social anxiety - why is she this way? what happened in the past for her to be so afraid of meeting people? how is this going to affect her interaction with the new people she meets in college eventually? (It doesn't, by the way, if her over effusiveness with Levi is any indication.)

I kept waiting for everything to snowball into something big at the end that led to a transformation in Cath (or any character). But even the fight she and Levi had towards the end was resolved in three pages or so.



More! I need more conflict - both internal and external - to make me root for the characters! (There was, however, this one scene between Cath and Wren, where they argued about their mother. Cath hates her, wants nothing to do with her, sees Wren as fraternising with the enemy when the latter agrees to have lunch and be in contact with her. That was a particularly emotionally charged scene and I could totally relate to Cath. I only wished there were more moments like this in the book.)

I don't know. Is it just me? Am I not quite getting something, some hidden awesomeness about Fangirl? Five-star YA contemporary is Sarah Dessen and Cath Crowley and Melina Marchetta for me. Fangirl is more like a 3 or 3.5 (a bonus 0.5 for the Simon Snow bits - even Baz, a fictional character, had more backstory than Cath, the protagonist).

(Just to be clear, I didn't HATE it. I enjoyed it well enough. But I just don't get the hype. For all the glowing reviews it got, I expected Fangirl to blow me away like What Happened to Goodbye or Graffiti Moon had.)

Still, I'm hoping Rowell's other book, Eleanor and Park (which comes with its own set of 5-star reviews on Goodreads), will ease up on the weird touching and hungry kissing and sappy praises about love interest's lips or hair or eyes or cheeks.

But from what I've read so far, that doesn't seem too likely. Eleanor and Park have gone from sitting next to each other on the bus (because they had no choice) to sharing comic books and music to stroking each other's hands to this:

Although I think the characters in Eleanor and Park have more backstory and personal conflict than those in Fangirl, so I'm holding out on the hope that this book will make me understand all those 5-star reviews. Okay, going in blind now...

Hope your week is filled with slightly more gratifying books! :0)

Moving Day is Coming!

With the preparations for the new house under way, I've been busy packing and getting carried away scrolling through Pinterest for home decor ideas.

You know how you get when you're on Pinterest. You see something pretty, and you pin it, and you find this whole board full of pretty things, and then you follow this board, and pin some other stuff from it, which leads to new boards full of pretty things. Then you pin stuff from that new board, and find more pretty things that lead to new boards. This is how even light gets sucked into black holes.

But look! So much pretty:

Yes, I'm sensing a trend here. But my dad said I'm only allowed to go crazy with the pink for my room. That last one, by the way, is how my room is going to look, except the walls are pinker. And I hope I can find a houndstooth cover seat (how cute is that!).

Excitement over decor choices aside, though, I'm a little bummed about moving out of my grandparents'. I've lived there for practically my whole life, and everything there is familiar to me. The bus routes, the little alleys and shortcuts, how I can just pop downstairs to grab a packet of nuts or batteries or lunch, the lifeguards and old regulars at the pool, the convenience of living so close to town, everything within reach, and how I can walk to the Central Library if I choose to.

Oh, well. This move has been a long time coming, after all. Plus, the new house is really pretty! Guess it'll just take some time to reconfigure my life.

On the writing front, I am miserably behind schedule. I was supposed to finish editing Blood Promise by last Sunday and have my crit partner read it this week. But I'm only at page 280 of 331 (yes, I hacked away 17 ENTIRE PAGES, about 4250 words - I am terrifyingly long-winded). By this week, I promise!

By the way, book review of Fangirl and The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender to come after I'm done with Blood Promise! Meanwhile, here's a dreamy piece from Joe Hisaishi to tide you through the week:

Happy midweek! :0)

on rejections letters and class gatherings

Another rejection letter, this time straight from the publisher itself. But gutting as it is, it's a PERSONALISED rejection letter. Which means FEEDBACK.

It's hard to get feedback as a writer. Aside from the handful of earnest and objective critics (LOVE YOU GUYS!), most people are either too busy to read your book, or they're too afraid to critique it in case they offend you, or they don't give the type of feedback you're looking for.

For instance:

Me: So what did you think?

Reader: It was pretty good.

Me: What did you like or dislike about it? Any bits where the story dragged on or didn't make sense?

Reader: It was exciting enough to make me read on.

Me: What about the characters? Could you relate to them or empathise with them? 

Reader: I liked xxx. He needs his own spinoff.

And so on.

So even if it's a rejection letter, I'm thankful for the feedback.


Joyce,

Thank you for your interest in BookFish Books! Unfortunately, we cannot move forward with UNTIL MORNING at this time. It's hard to know where to start without feedback, so here is some of ours:

We loved the portions with Night, but the portions with Lexi did not capture our attention. Some of the dialogue felt too formal for the YA genre, particularly in the Lexi sections. Also, for YA, the traditionally accepted length is 40-60K words, with a bit of flexibility on either end. 

I personally am sad to be passing on this one because I really wanted to know more about Night.

If you want to do a revise and resubmit on the changes we suggested, we'd be happy to take a fresh look at in the future.

All the best,

Erin

Of course, this is still my general response to it:









But, you know, after YEARS of receiving rejection letters, you sort of heal faster and soon you're just like,



And that was what I did for the entire afternoon before going for my class gathering on Saturday. For Blood Promise, that is.

MORE CHANGES:

1. Changed Ian's parentage and identity

2. Killed off a character

3. Changed the speech style of one character

4. Tweaked the history of the island and took a deeper look at its customs and language (thanks to the suggestions my Super Critic Partner, Jenna, gave)

With that done, I psyched myself up for the class gathering.

Is it just me or do you get gripped by social anxiety before every gathering? It doesn't matter that you know those people are nice, or that this isn't the first time you've met up with them, but before every meeting with someone other than your family members, you just seize up with panic and worry. It's like a reflex reaction to the word "social" or "gathering" or "meetup" or "human interaction".

...

No? Just me? Okay then.

I mean, at first you're like, This might be fun! I need some human contact.



Because, you know,



But then you start wondering if you annoyed them with your incessant Facebook and Twitter updates, and if they're like all





And pretty soon you're like, I'm never going to be normal. They'll hate me.

But then you try to convince yourself you're worrying about nothing and you've known those people for ages and hello, they're NICE.

So you SHOW THE HELL UP and start working those rusty people skills.



But then you sort of get the hang of this human interaction thing after a while and you're like

So here's us (13 years on!) in a terribly grainy photo thanks to my phone:

Yes, I survived human interaction and I actually enjoyed it loads. Till the next gathering, guys!


Hope you're having a good start to the week! :0)

Fiction Friday - Five Knocks for a Light

Howie was five when he heard the voice in the wall.

He didn't think much of it at first. A disembodied male voice was nothing compared to that life-sized monster under his bed, the one that was always hungry and came with a funny smell.

It wasn't until the voice spoke his name one night that Howie paid attention. Before, the voice had just been making odd noises for attention. A gusty sigh, an irritable tsk!, a low ululation that Howie found annoying, particularly when he was watching cartoons in the afternoon.

This time, though, Howie heard his name. Not a question, but a quiet statement out of the blue, as though the speaker was considering it most carefully. The voice came from the space between his bedside table and toy cupboard, where Howie was just able to squeeze into.

A series of raps - two slow, three quick - came at a hollow corner of the wall. "Howie," the voice said again.

Howie inched towards the corner, pushing an errant toy train carriage out of the way. "It's not fair that you know my name but I don't know yours."

"You can call me H."

"That's my name."

"Now you're just being pedantic." Howie didn't know what pedantic meant, but he didn't share that information. "You wouldn't by any chance have a light, would you?" H said. "It's immensely gruelling to be trapped in here."

Howie didn't know what immensely or gruelling meant, but he did have a light. He totted over to the store cupboard where all emergency kit was kept and reached for the torchlight, then hurried back to his room before his mother could notice he was up past his bedtime.

"Why do you need a light?"

"Have you never been trapped in a wall before?"

"No."

"Well, lucky you," H begrudged. "It's the pits in here. I’m dying for a smoke.”

"Mommy says smoking is bad."

"You sound young. Are you young?"

"I’m turning five in a week."

"That's young. Where's my light?"

Howie shone the torchlight at the wall.

H gave a shout, letting out a few angry-sounding words Howie once heard his father say. "Put that out! Are you trying to blind me?" Howie switched off the torchlight. "I didn't mean a torchlight, I meant - never mind. Just don't do that again."

"Are you a monster?" Howie stole a glance at the pair of gleaming eyes watching him from behind. "The monster under my bed is afraid of lights, too."

"I beg your pardon. I may not have won pageants, but I certainly am not monstrous."

"A ghost, then?"

"That's insulting, too. Do I sound dead to you?"

Howie was beginning to get very annoyed with H. "Then what are you?" he yelled, before remembering to keep his voice down. His mother slept very lightly these days - sometimes not at all - and he didn't want to get in trouble for staying up past his bedtime.

"I'm the same as that thing under your bed."

Howie took another peek at the monster. It was still watching him silently, almost possessively. He turned back to the wall and whispered to H, "He's very troublesome, but he makes good company when I hide there."

"Why -"

"Shh!" Howie hissed, his ears pricked. Footsteps. Coming down the hall.

H made an indignant noise, but obliged to stay silent.

Howie scrambled into bed, ducking under the covers. The door creaked open. It had been a while since the door hinges around the house were oiled.

Howie kept his breathing evenly spaced, hoping that he would still find H where he was after his mother left. He needn't have worried, though. H's constant moaning filled the room. Howie feared his mother might chase H out of the walls - he had only just made a new friend - but she only pulled the door shut and headed to her room.

After his mother left, Howie kicked off the covers and leaned over his bed.

"How come I'm the only who can hear you?" he said. "Daddy thought I was lying about the monster, and Mommy looks at me sadly all the time now. She thinks I've gone crazy."

"The monster lives inside you, Howie. That's why you can see it."

"And you? Do you live inside me too?"

H didn't reply. Howie figured he had no answer for that.

After that first encounter, Howie would hear from H three more times. Each time, H showed up whenever his father visited. Each time, he sat with Howie and told him stories of all the old tenants until the fighting outside died down. On nights when H wasn't around, Howie would crawl under the bed with the monster. Even its silent presence was comforting.

There were monsters that turned into companions, and horrors that turned into confidantes. There were people who wanted more of you - grow up, Howie! speak up, Howie! for God's sake, stop crying! - and those were the monsters who stole your voice and ate up your dreams.

Eventually, his father stopped visiting and his mother sold the house. Howie and his mother moved to a smaller apartment next to a busy street.

Some nights, out of nostalgia or foolish hope, Howie would peek under his bed and knock on the walls, hoping for a sign of the monster or H. By then, he had known to look in the mirror for the real monsters. But he kept a light in his pocket anyway, to welcome the horrors home.

Can you tell I'm on procrastination mode?

UGH. Thanks to my general laziness and obsession with pretty faces, I failed to come up with a short story for this week. I keep vowing to get off Tumblr and Pinterest, but damn those pretty things. Namely, this:

Ugh, you're a life ruiner. I hope you know that.

Although I wasn't COMPLETELY idle. I'm almost done rewriting Blood Promise! Added one major character, dug into one of the main ones and ripped out his guts, and thickened the plot. All that's left to do now is rewrite part of the climax and denouement, and trim and tighten the entire manuscript.

Hopefully, I can complete all that in a week. I've dragged this on for too long. Damn distractions.

Promise - PROMISE - I'll finish up the rewrites in a week. And then after that I can work on some short stories!

*

And now, please allow me some time and space to unleash my inner fangirl.

SUPER JUNIOR IS BAAAAAACK! With their 7th album! After two years! Much excited! Can't handle! Will implode in minutes!







Yes, these are the dorks I'm in love with.

Now that their leader is back, 7th album let's go!

*

Speaking of fangirl, I've finally gotten started on Rainbow Rowell's book.

It's been on my to-read list for the longest time, but there were just so many books in the way. Please don't disappoint, Fangirl!


Hope you're having a lovely week! :0)

(Also, promise: longer post next week!)

the week in tweets and books

The Week in Tweets:

The Week in Books: 


1. We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart 

OMG. This darn book. I don't know how I feel about it, whether I LOOOOOOVED it or HAAAAATED it. Two extremes. No middle ground for this book.

This is my (melodramatic) review on Goodreads:

Where do I start. Maybe about how this book completely WRECKED me. Clobbered me on the head at the revelation and then ripped me apart towards the end.

I don't know if I like this book. On a technical level, it's perfect. But I'm a sucker for happy endings - or at least, an upbeat and promising one - but this one doesn't deliver that. Instead, it has made its goblin home inside me and I can't chase it out. I can't stop thinking about the characters.

And the thing is, I can't say what the story's about without giving anything away. Just know that it's about a privileged family that tore itself inside out and there is no happy ending.

Excuse me, I need to go weep some more now. I hope you know what you've done, Lockhart. *Googles for her other books*


2. Goodbye, Rebel Blue, by Shelley Coriell

This is SO YA, it practically oozes snark and brashness and wanting and all other traits that teenagers embody.

The narrator is an edgy, smart, feisty girl called Rebecca (though she calls herself Rebel) who goes to live with her straight-laced aunt, uncle and practically-perfect-but-for-her-putrid-personality cousin after her free-spirited mother dies. Rebel is acquainted with goody-two-shoes Kennedy during detention, where they are forced to write a bucket list. The next day, Kennedy dies in an accident, and Rebel takes it upon herself to fulfill Kennedy's bucket list.

It's one of those uproariously funny, upbeat, but also poignant. With Rebel's snarky, engaging voice, you sort of breeze through the book and have to remind yourself to pace yourself so you don't reach the end so soon. The last time I wanted to hear a character talk so much was when I was reading Catcher in the Rye.


3. Sinner, by Maggie Stiefvater

I still love Sam Roth from Shiver, of course. Who could not love the sweet, soulful, sensitive, song-writing, shape-shifting* boy-wolf who folds paper cranes for his girlfriend, writes songs for her, and is funny and loves Rilke? I mean, COME ON.

But Cole St. Clair is something else entirely. Sam may be my ideal type of guy, but Cole threatens to  with his restlessness, disregard for the rules, . He's the guy who can charm the panties off you and knows how to work that to his advantage. Which would make him seriously douche-y and assholic if he weren't actually a pretty sentimental monogamist at heart.

And since I'd been dying to return to Maggie's world of Mercy Falls, I fell in love with this book since page one.


What are YOU reading this week? :0)


* I've obviously been afflicted with alliterationisis today.

Book review: Dreams of Gods and Monsters

So I've finally finished reading Dreams of Gods and Monsters, dammit.

I'd been trying to stave off the ending for as long as I could, but I guess no story lasts forever.

DOGAM, of course, was amazing. It was a beautiful conclusion to an epic trilogy. I remember how the first book, Daughter of Smoke and Bone, got me hooked, with its gritty premise (bones! teeth! exotic places like Morocco!), vivid characters and scenes (Brimstone the ram-headed resurrectionist! Razgut the foul, bloated fallen angel! the masquerade ball where Akiva magicked a living shawl of moths for Karou! *swoon swoon dies*)

What a ride it's been.

What I loved about DOGAM:


1. THE STELIANS. HOLY SHIT, THE STELIANS. They had me the minute the Stelian queen, Scarab, bared her teeth at the prisoners and offered them the flesh fruit grown of the prisoners' comrades. So deliciously disturbing. (Not sure what that says about my mental state.)


2. The antagonists. Jael, Razgut, Morgan Toth, and Esther Van de Vloet. They are vile. Which makes their comeuppance that much more gratifying.


3. Zuzana and Mik. Let's face it: who can NOT love them? Zuzana, the feisty little marionette girl from book 1, is just as adorable in book 3, but twice deadly and awesome now. And Mik, Violin Boy, is as sweet and romantic and crazy in love with Zuze. Together, they brought some semblance of normalcy and levity to all the doom and gloom and chaos of war.


4. As always, the prose. I've lost track of the number of times I've read and re-read and re-read and taken a screenshot of a sentence or passage I loved. These are just the tip of the iceberg of gorgeous, swoon-worthy moments in the story:

When this passage made me really want to live in the Far Isles:

When I felt Liraz's guilt gnawing at me too:

When I marvelled at the stuff Laini's brain could come up with:

When I whooped with joy at Violin Boy's romantic (and impossible) proposal:

When I imagined the film version of the book (all that makeup!):

When my heart almost stopped at this moment (thanks, Laini):

WHAT is in Laini Taylor's food? No seriously, what. I need to know, so I can produce prose as insanely beautiful as hers.

And come up with plot ideas as original and daring as hers.

And be able to weave it all together as flawlessly as she does.

One thing, though.


What DOGAM could stand to lose: 

I would gush over the perfection that is DOGAM, but I couldn't help but think that the story could be a little bit shorter. I mean, do we need so much description of Karou and Akiva's attraction to each other? I get it, the two of you are in love and it's earth-shattering and the cosmos align every time your eyes meet and the space between you two is electric and all that. Now get on with business already. You've got a world to rebuild.

So if I were being nitpicky, I'd give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

But who am I kidding. This is the closest to perfection YA fantasy can get. So 5 out of 5 stars.