TLIF - Love is in the air

My wedding anniversary is in a week and a half. Ay (not only my spouse, but my muse...how lucky is that?) and I have been married for 9 years. As that fateful celebration approaches, and I try and figure out how to make it special and surprise-filled, I've been thinking about love in general.

We've known each other for 12 years. We clicked from the start, and even though it took us another year to start dating, a year after that to make it exclusive, and another year to tie the knot, we both kind of knew from the start we wanted to end up together.

Along those same lines, I've been thinking about romantic relationships in novels. There's a formula in a lot of those relationships. The guy who drives the girl nuts - who insults her and doesn't get along with her and whom she almost always misunderstands even though the reader knows he doesn't mean it that way - is the guy she's going to end up with.

As a reader, you know almost as soon as he's introduced that he's going to be the love interest by the end of the story.

I had a problem with that for a long time. Not in other stories, oddly enough, but I refused to let it happen in my own. I hated anything I wrote that adhered to that formula.

Last week I read Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes by Denise Grover Swank. The book was fantastic, btw. I stayed up late two nights in a row to finish it. And I'll post a real review next week.

Here's the thing - same methodology. And then it occurred to me that I loved the book anyway. And that there was a reason for all the friction between the characters. It drove other aspects of the plot besides their relationship, and it served a purpose. Or several of them. And talk about a great inciter for repeated conflict.

And now I'm no longer opposed to that line of thinking. I'm reminding myself that the point isn't whether or not the couple ends up together, it's 1 - how they got there, and 2 - what else they did along the way. That's what drives the reader. That's what compells us to move forward in the story.

What formulas/tropes do you think are acceptable in writing and/or which are just inexcusable?

PS: Happy Early Anniversary, Ay ^_^ <3

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Telling Us What We Can Bleeping Read

Don't forget, I and a bunch of other people are giving away some awesome free stuff. Check it out if you haven't yet.

The ALA's list of banned and challenged classics

#4 - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
#9 - 1984 - George Orwell
#17 - Animal Farm - George Orwell

These are important because they're some of the only assigned reading I finished when I was in high school. I read all three in eighth grade. Books I never finished included anything by Dickens or Shakespear. Ever read Great Expectations? Wanna talk about screwed up home life? That story puts any reality show to shame. But only barely.

Not on the list:

• All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque. More required reading that I finished, and the graphic descriptions of violence and other things gave me nightmares for months. I'm not sorry I read it, but still.
• Hamlet
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
  Oliver Twist

Let's see...man pretends to be crazy to out his father's killer and everyone dies
...wood nymphs get it on...and not necessarily honestly
...orphan boy steals, cheats, lies, and lives a horrendous life...at least at first

Also not on the list (also not classics, or recommended reading, but still) any of the novels I found at the library and passed around to my friends at school when I realized they had 'naughty' scenes in them. The book I read about devil worship. VC Andrews (all of my friends read Flowers in the Attic).


Here's the thing about all of these. My parents knew I read them. My parents who were upstanding members of their religous community. They even knew about the devil worship one. They allowed it. They encouraged it. And, oh yeah, my father was always available to answer any questions I had about what I'd read.

Then again, I claim allegience to a god of mischeif now, so maybe all that reading when I was younger was bad for me. All that learning. Self-education. I recently discovered Kurt Vonnegut (late bloomer I suppose) and was absolutely infatuated with Cat's Cradle but there's no way I would have understood the underlying theme of the story 20 years ago.

I'm glad I was exposed to those things, even if it was only through words, because then I knew what they were. Hiding me from the reality of fiction wouldn't have done anything except made sure I was ill-prepared for the real-life version of it. Oh, and thanks to 'All Quiet', I still cringe at war movies, Hollywood blood, and gory violence.

Draw your own conclusions. Your children aren't mine to raise or to tell what to read. Then again, no one else's children are yours to raise or tell what to read, either.

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I Can Haz Free Stuff?

As I mentioned yesterday, Sylvia Ney is hosting a unique type of blogfest to celebrate crossing the 400 follower mark.The Wonderland Giveaway. I thought it sounded like a great idea, so I'm participating. Enter here if you'd like, and then hop on over to 'Writing in Wonderland' to see what else is going on.

I had to think for a little while about what to offer today, and I've finally come up with it. I almost offered up Ace - the black kitten (I say kitten, but he's a year old and weighs more than a bowling ball) in the picture. Not because I don't love my kitten dearly, but because as I tried to take pictures this morning, he kept darting into the shot. I assumed this meant he wanted to be first prize. But I've retracted his offer, and come up with something much less furry instead.

(Note: I know there are two of you waiting on prizes from the last give-away I did. I have them and will be sending them very shortly ^_^)

But first, the rules. It'll be easy.

• I'll ask that you're a blog follower and that if you're on Twitter, you go follow me there (@aszreal). I'll ask, but I won't require it. I like my readers to be here because they want to be.
• Before Aug 22 (by 11:59 pm EST on Aug 21) Leave a comment below saying hi, saying you want to participate, things like that.
• On Monday, August 22, I'll pick a random number - or three - and announce the winners.
• The grand prize is available to anyone anywhere if Amazon.com ships to you. Internationally, the moon. Anywhere that Amazon.com ships to. The second and third place prizes are only available in the US.

Again - you can enter all the way up to 11:59 PM eastern time, Aug 21

Prizes

Grand Prize
$25 Amazon.com gift card. I'll email it to you, and you can buy books or other nifty stuffs until your heart's content ^_^

Runner-Up
The three anthologies below are full of fantastic stories. I'm only partly biased because each one contains a story by me - three of my favorites I've written.



Second Runner-Up

This is the picture my kitty really wanted to be in. You can see him in the upper left corner. This is the cleanest shot I could get. This is my YA Urban Fantasy prize. Four clear-poly folders, a copy of 'City of Bones' by Cassandra Claire, and a copy of 'Personal Demons' by Lisa Desrochers.

Enter by commenting. Entries close Aug 21 at 11:59 pm Eastern time. Good luck everyone!

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Book Review: Born to be a Dragon

Short tangent before I dive into this. Tomorrow, Sylvia Ney @ Writing in Wonderland is hosting an amazing and fantastic blogfest. It's not your typical 'post something you wrote' type blogfest. Instead, it's a massive blog-hop giveaway. Everyone participating is hosting a giveaway to help her celebrate having more than 400 followers. I'm participating, so stop by tomorrow for the give-away ^_^

Okay, book review time. I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this up. Middle-grade story about dragons...okay, sure, I'll give it a try. I wasn't disappointed. First of all, not directly related to the story but something I loved - ever chapter had it's own dragon picture leading in, and the artwork was a lot of fun. It was a nice touch.

But that was more like the pretty icing-flowers on the cake. The story itself was fantastic. A dragon with a mark that makes him a threat to the leader of the dragon clan. A girl who dreams of dragons. A lot. To the point where it gets her bounced from one foster home to another for being 'too weird'.

Both characters struggle to embrace their uniqueness without being ostracized from their worlds. As the story moves on and their lives come together, they grow as individuals and become close because of who they are, not what.

I enjoyed the unique approach to dragons in this world, and how the fantasy aspects mingled with a reality I'm already familiar with. This was a fun read, and would be a fantastic book for pre-teen kids who want to give fantasy a try, but aren't too big on other-world settings.

And if you'd like to order a signed copy of the book, or you just want to get to know the author, you can hop on over to Eisley Jacob's blog. ^_^

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