Teaser Tuesday: Oh Those Crazy Writers

Hello, all! I am quite swamped, and must be getting back to my small mountain of homework - so you know what that means? You get a Teaser Tuesday today!

This is another snippet from Smoke and Mirrors, which I wish I had more time to work on, but, ah well, such is life. In it, Theo and Josephine go to visit a scholar whose essay has gotten Theo all confused. He's hoping to find out that his suspicions have been only that, but, well... we don't always get what we wish for.

Enjoy!

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“Forgive me for intruding, Mr. Atwood-Berkley-”

“Nonsense. Reynolds never lets anyone in to see me, it’s getting rather ridiculous.”

His wide, fixed grin was beginning to make Theo uncomfortable, and he felt Josephine shift uncomfortably beside him. He repeated his faltering introduction of himself, this time including Josephine. She dipped a short, brief curtsey. 

“Ah, excellent, excellent. Do sit down. Reynolds! Bring us some tea, that’s a good chap.” 

The butler bowed, a gesture that made him look as though he was two fixed pieces on a hinge, his torso remaining quite straight throughout the quick bob. Theo and Josephine seated themselves on a sofa near Atwood-Berkley, the feather cushions very much deflated. Theo settled his bowler hat on his knee, Reynolds having apparently forgotten to take it when they entered the house. Perhaps he was not quite as good a butler as his demeanour suggested, or perhaps he was not expecting their visit to be of long duration. True, the entire thing was making him uncomfortable – the fact that he was still sinking into the sofa as though it wanted to trap him did not help – but nothing so far suggested that there was anything wrong. He struggled to match the writer’s unnerving grin, hoping very much to find his suspicions proven wrong. 

“I’ve been working on a thesis about practical applications of magic,” he began. “My professor gave me one of your articles-”

“Ah, yes, he would at that. He is quite fond of my theories. It’s odd that no one else is, I haven’t been able to publish for months. What do you make of that, then?” 

“I – I find it all very strange. You seem to suggest in the article I was given that illusory magic could be made corporeal-”

“Oh, well, yes, of course it can. Rothfeldt and I came to that conclusion years ago.”

For a moment, all Theo could do was stare at him. He could not be serious. He could not smile brightly at him and calmly deliver such a statement. It simply was not possible. 

“But – surely that is impossible-”

 “Nothing is impossible. Difficult, maybe, but not impossible. Reynolds, there you are. Won’t you show them?” 

The butler had returned with a tray of tea things. The man paused, but then set down the tray and moved closer to where Theo and Josephine sat. He rubbed at something with his foot, something on the floor that Theo could not see. And then Josephine yelped. Before he knew what had happened, he had fallen to the ground, with his sister sprawled there beside him, and the sofa they had been sitting on was gone. It had vanished, leaving nothing in its wake, not even a solitary goose feather. 

“There, you see? Not at all impossible.”

How to Do All the Things

Yesterday in Italian class, my professor handed around a sign-in sheet for a weekly Italian conversation hour. While this would, in truth, probably help my floundering Italian skills a lot, I passed it along immediately without adding my  name. She gave me a look, of course, and jokingly asked why I hadn't signed up.

I answered with "Non ho il tempo! Necessito fare tutte le cose. TUTTE LE COSE, MARELLA."

So basically I made a meme joke in a foreign language because I am just that cool. (One other kid in class laughed...)

But seriously. I have to do ALL THE THINGS this semester. Allow me to illustrate:

1. Writing Children's Literature class
2. Writing the Short Novel class
3. Italian class
4. French Revolution history seminar
5. voice lessons (and the practicing that goes along with those)
6. Ballroom class (this is more stress relief than anything else, and fortunately doesn't come with homework)
7. Direct a Broadway Revue showcase that goes up six weeks from Saturday
8. Internship with a literary agency (aka read all the queries and manuscripts) 
9. Work on inviting a YA author to campus to give a reading
10. Write MY novel
11. Clean my apartment
12. Cook sometimes. Because, you know, food is good.
13. Go to work.

So yeah. All the things. And do you know how I manage to do all the things?

I don't.

Doing this many things is a crazy kind of balancing act. I'm a full time student, and so homework is currently my first priority. I may only be taking four academic classes, but all four of them really pack a punch. They involve a lot of reading and writing, which might not necessarily be hard, but they take TIME. So much time that I spent all weekend holed up in my room working, rather than, you know, seeing my friends like people SHOULD do on the weekends.

And I do need to sleep at some point, even if I'm notoriously bad at it.

But at the same time as I'm a full time student, I am also a writer. And I WANT to have the time to work on my novels. I need to. I am serious about this. I want to be a published novelist so badly it hurts sometimes. I lie awake at night wondering what more I could possibly do to get my foot in the door, to have someone give me a chance, to prove that I love this and I am willing to work so hard to achieve it.

But when all my time is spent staring at textbooks, the free time I have I usually NEED to devote to relaxing, to hanging out with friends and letting my brain unwind for a change, because otherwise I might just explode.

And I do write every day. My project for short novel? That's a novel I want to write for myself as much as I now need to write it for the deadlines imposed for class. I'm at the level of my major that I can write what I want to write, rather than bending everything to the prompts given in lower level writing classes (and that's not to say I didn't learn anything in those lower level classes, just that I now have the freedom to do what I want).

So I cheat a little. I snatch moments when I can. Because I do all the things - and all of those things are things I want to be doing. I love my internship. Rehearsals for Broadway Revue start tomorrow, and I'm super excited. I like my classes, no matter how much I complain about all the homework I have to do.

No piece of writing advice works for every writer, except, I think, this one: don't let it stress you out. As long as you are writing, it doesn't matter. Steal moments when you can, and don't beat yourself up about it when you can't. It's not worth it to turn something you love into a chore.

So have a cup of tea and take a break, my lovely writer friends. I'm going to go finish my Italian homework.

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In other news, my friend Stefan Bachmann's book THE PECULIAR releases today! YAY STEFAN!!! It's a really good book, you should read it.

About The Book

Hello All! So, my awesome summer intern friend Ari tagged me in her last blog post. I think this one is especially interesting and useful, so I am going to pounce on it (... a week later... sorry Ari... I might talk about Doing All The Things on Thursday...) I hope you guys are interested too!



1. What is the name of your book?

A TERROR OF DARKNESS

2. Where did the idea for your book come from?

Heh, this is kind of a long story. When I was a sophomore in high school, I was sitting with my friend Erin on a bus in the dark, on the way back from our annual band/chorus trip, and I said I'd been mulling over a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with a werewolf in. She thought that was awesome, so I wrote it on and off for a while. I finished it and started working on a sequel.

Then I went to college and asked a professor how one goes about publishing a novel. She introduced me to a student in the other section of her Intro to the Essay class - Kody Keplinger - who taught me how to write a query letter and told me that, seriously, I needed to cut my book in half if I wanted to actually pitch it. I managed to get it from about 163k (!!!) to 100k (!), and then I queried it. I got some interest, got some feedback, and then decided it needed to be reworked. I puttered around for quite a while, trying to find a good way to fix all the problems in the ms.

And then I rewrote the entire thing from scratch. The only thing that's stayed the same from the beginning are the central characters, who I love beyond reason, really.

3. In what genre would you classify your book?

YA historical fantasy. This might be a point of contention for some people, since there are werewolves in my manuscript. I do see this in the realm of fantasy rather than paranormal, however. In most paranormal books, I think, the werewolf/vampire/evil rabbit character has to keep that identity a secret, and there's an introduction to that secret world for a normal human character. Whereas in fantasy, elements of magic - in my case, a magical creature - are simply present and accepted in the world. Does that make any sense or am I losing my mind?

4. If you had to pick actors to play your characters in a movie rendition, who would you choose?

Um... well... Ben Barnes as Prince Caspian looks rather like Avar, I think... although that random kid I sat next to on the Tube once was a dead ringer for him. He was also wearing a fez, too; so much the better.

5. Give us a one-sentence synopsis of your book.

Seventeen-year-old Rose must break her family out of the most feared prison in Paris before they face the guillotine, with only the help of the werewolf who got them all into trouble in the first place. 

6. Is your book already published?

*grins hopefully at the Literary Powers that Be* Someday, I should hope!

7. How long did it take you to write your book?

Um... about five years, I think? Although that's from "initial idea" to "manuscript as it is now," not how long it actually took me to physically write anything. That I don't remember.

8. What other books within your genre would you compare it to? Or, readers of which books would enjoy yours?

Well, my query letter compares it to The Scorpio Races and A Great and Terrible Beauty, because that kind of mixture of reality, history, and fantasy is what I'm really gunning for when I write.

9. Which authors inspired you to write this book?

Well, goodness. Libba Bray to an extent. I think I was initially inspired by wanting to write my own version of Beauty and the Beast. After that, my obsession with the French Revolution and my love of the characters carried the project.  



10. Tell us anything that might pique our interest in your book.

It's a kissing book. *grins*




All right, there it is! Some information on A TERROR OF DARKNESS. I tag... anyone who wishes to complete this tag! (I know, I know... but d'you know All of Those Things I mentioned? I ought to go do them now. Until Thursday!)

It Was Bound to Happen Eventually...

So last Sunday, I moved into my lovely new apartment on campus. We have a great view of Cayuga Lake out the living room window (and also my bedroom window), and there's lots of space and a full-sized fridge and more drawers than I know what to do with, which is unusual but cool.

There is also a spiral staircase leading from the kitchen/living room area to the bedrooms-and-bathroom area.

Said spiral staircase looks like this:

This spiral staircase is made out of black-painted metal, which has those little cross shaped things imprinted into it, supposedly to give some measure of traction, although really it doesn't work particularly well. Why a college would put such a thing into apartments lived in mostly by people who are now old enough to legally purchase alcohol is beyond me. Basically, this thing is the Spiral Staircase of Death.

And yes. That's right. I fell down it.

I live with three other girls: Lisa, Sarah, and Other Caitlin (so called because, well, I'm Caitlin too, although she also answers to Molly Weasley). Lisa, Sarah, and I were sitting downstairs doing homework or puttering about the internet or some such thing, when Other Caitlin came halfway down the stairs and asked where might be the best place to find some new nail clippers at 7 or 8 in the evening. I replied "my desk..." which sparked a conversation about whether or not that was weird, which maybe it should be but really I didn't care very much (it wasn't as though she had just been gardening or making mud pies or something). So Other Caitlin thanked me profusely and went into my room to find the nail clippers. Twelve seconds later, she called down the stairs "where do I find them again?" whereupon I went up the stairs, grabbed my nail kit from my desk, opened it, and handed her my nail clippers. And then I went to go back down the stairs.

What I was wearing plays a small part in this story: I had on a tank top, a skirt, and socks. The socks were because I was inside and my feet get cold, and when they get cold they get sweaty and gross and so do my hands for some reason, but anyway, I had socks on. The Spiral Staircase of Death, as previously mentioned, has little to no traction, and I was hurrying down the stairs. I think I was even holding on to the railing, actually. I was on the second or third step up from the bottom, when I registered two things in very quick succession.

The first was: Oh snap, I'm slipping!

The second was: OH SNAP GROUND.

I threw my hands out and then I was on the ground, sort of kneeling weirdly in front of the staircase. I sat there a bit stunned for a second.

Then all hell broke loose.

Sarah shouted "oh no!" from across the room. Lisa, who was sitting in the armchair directly next to the stairs, looked up from her reading and frantically asked if I was all right. I said I was fine, shifting carefully so I could look at my knees, which were quite red. Sarah then told me that I'd fallen incredibly gracefully, like a ballerina dying onstage (so, thanks, I think?). The rug burn on my knees was getting redder by the second, which was a bit concerning, and Lisa said something to that effect, and I protested that I was fine. Other Caitlin, however, shouted from upstairs "OH MY GOD IS SHE BLEEDING?!?" and came running downstairs to see. I kept protesting that I was fine, and Lisa and Caitlin began (intentionally) overreacting. I was still sitting at the foot of the staircase, so I said that I'd relocate to the couch five feet away, and Lisa shouted at me to stay put and that I should elevate my legs before they fell off (even stuffing a pillow under my knees). I was given some ice. Other Caitlin and Lisa then hurried up the stairs (over me) to get polysporin and band-aids, which was when I ninja-ed my way over to the couch, where Sarah was sitting, really just being amused by the whole thing.

Lisa and Other Caitlin came back with their medical supplies. I was expecting to get yelled at for getting up and moving to the couch, but I didn't, fortunately. Lisa then proceeded to open her polysporin; when I held out my hand for some she said "I'm not putting it on your hand, I'm putting it on your knee!" whereupon I grabbed it from her and did it myself, thanks very much. I was unable to escape Lisa and Caitlin putting the band-aids on my knees, however, which tickled a LOT. Other Caitlin then handed me a piece of chocolate, because apparently falling down the stairs and coming close to dementors have the same remedy (hey, I wasn't going to say no to that one!).

This entire time, their incredibly comic and extreme overreaction had me laughing hysterically, so much so that when Lisa made a joke about me asphyxiating from falling down I said it'd be more probable that I'd do that from laughing too much. I'm not sure if I've done this episode justice writing about it - it was a complete flurry of running up and down stairs and shouting and general ridiculousness. Kind of like one of those goofy chase scenes where everyone is running frantically in and out of a set number of doors.

I suppose, then, that the moral of this story is twofold: one, be incredibly careful when wearing socks on metal staircases. And two, if you have to fall, do it gracefully, and make sure you've got some awesome friends around to cheer you up after you hit the ground. 

Ithaca Again

Hello, dear blog readers. I hope you are well on this fine Tuesday evening. I am currently ensconced in my wonderful new apartment with two of my three lovely flatmates, listening to someone else's music and the sound of my keyboard and the wind, and more than a little miffed that the very strong smell of pot coming through the window from somewhere is putting a damper on my sense of calmness.

The rather omnipresent smell of pot is one thing I did not miss about Ithaca, but there are many things I have missed. Mostly those things are people - I missed sitting around at two in the morning with roommates, hanging out and laughing and talking about important things or the meaning of life or nothing in particular really. I missed my friends that I have not seen since December, before I left for London. It's been great to see things click back into place, to pick up conversations as though I've never even left, to hug people I've only known in text or in pixelated videos for months. It's been great to be surrounded by friends again, in my apartment, in the dining hall, sitting at a table in "the pub," having person after person wave and say hello and ask how my summer was. Classes start tomorrow, and I'm excited to be reading new things, learning new things, attempting new things in my writing. It'll be hard, but it'll be fun.

Of course there are things I did not miss. I did not miss the utterly vile smell of marijuana, I did not miss the worry of piling-up homework, I did not miss the cold (although it is not, of course, cold here yet. It certainly will be, though).

It feels a bit surreal to be here again. I was walking through campus to pick up my textbooks in the mail center, looking around at all the familiar buildings, and for a moment I felt a little bit like I was in one of those dreams where you know you are in a specific place even though your surroundings are not that place at all. I couldn't quite grasp what being back meant. How could I be here again after everything that had happened? How could I be in Ithaca, after being blown off a mountain in Edinburgh, after getting hopelessly lost and then found again in Venice, after walking three hours in snow-clogged London? How can I be back in the same place, to do the same thing, when I am not the same?

I do think this semester will be pretty exciting though. I'm looking forward to my classes; I'm looking forward to directing Broadway Revue and joining the Quidditch team. I'm excited to cook delicious things for my roommates and other assorted friends; I'm excited about the shiny new internship I snagged myself (talk about the benefits of Twitter!!); I'm excited for lots of adventures around this neat little town I live in.

I think one of my favorite things to do is just sit and talk with a small group of close friends until all hours of the morning. We talk about serious things - relationships and breakups and friendships and careers and hopes and dreams and fears, all sorts of things. We talk about other things too, like books and tv and movies. We tell jokes, talk about stupid stuff that doesn't matter, as well as the stuff that does. It feels comforting to be surrounded by people you trust, when you know they trust you too. I'm glad to be back in that environment. I'm looking forward to a lot of late nights and tired mornings, smiles and secrets and so many laughs my jaw aches with it.

And hopefully all this will happen without too many unpleasant smells filtering in from outside. 

The Year Turns Round Again

Yes, that is a War Horse reference. No, I am not completely obsessed. Well... yeah, okay, maybe I am.

Anyway. It's that time of year again - time to pack up all of the things, put them into my dad's car, and drive back up to the frozen north. Which is not, of course, all that frozen at this time of year, but will hopefully not be blisteringly hot, at any rate.

I'm both really excited and a little reluctant to head back to school, as usual. I'm excited for my flat and my flatmates (well, technically apartment, since I am once again in America, but WHATEVER), and I'm excited to see friends I haven't seen since December. I'm excited for my classes (although not so much for the homework). I'm excited for my theatre group and all sorts of things. It'll be great.

But I'm also, as usual, sad to leave my house and my bed and my cat and my sister and my parents. They're lovely. I'm very lucky to get along with my family as well as I do, so as excited as I am to go see my friends and hang out and be all Independent!Semi-Grown-Up-Person, it's always a bit sad leaving home again.

I'm also a bit worried that I'll get the whole "reverse culture shock" thing all over again. After spending five months in London and all summer working in NYC, going back to Ithaca is going to be a bit... strange. I'll be in an apartment again, cooking my own meals, but there will be no local Sainsbury's around the corner to pop into if I had run out of an ingredient or wanted some dessert. There will be no corner pizza place only open in the middle of the night (which, by London standards, is about 11pm) to run to when I don't feel like cooking or it's late and I'm starving after coming home from seeing a play for class or hanging about in a pub with friends. There will be no pubs, and no pub food. (Gosh I miss pub food.) Halfway through October, it will start getting colder than it ever gets in London, even in January.

And I've changed. I'm a little bolder than I used to be. I'm a little more sure of myself. I hope that I can fit who I am now into the space I left for myself in Ithaca.

I am looking forward to going back, though, even if it means my Italian class might kill me.

I'm going to do my best to keep up the Tuesday-Thursday blog schedule, since those are the days when I have only one class. Dear readers, tell me what you would like me to blog about! More query tips from my internship? Writing things I learn in my classes? Reminiscences of my adventures in Europe? Snippets of my current wip (there will soon be two, one regular one and one for my short novel class)? Let me know!

Are you going back to school soon? Excited about it? Let me know! :D

Teaser Tuesday: Not as it Seems

Hello, lovely blog readers! It's been rather a while since my last Teaser Tuesday, so I thought I'd share another snippet of my wip, Smoke and Mirrors, with you.

Some background info: Kate is finding India to be rather less adventurous and rather more hot than she had ancitipated; Clara is talking even less than usual, and so Kate is bored. Also, magic exists in this world, but only as illusions.

I hope you like it!

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“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything to read lying about, do you?” she asked, turning to face her sister at last. 

Clara shook her head, not taking her eyes off the orderly black lines and dots of her sheet music. A conversation, it seemed, was out of the question. Clara had been awfully tense ever since arriving in India, and it was beginning to frustrate Kate. If Clara was more taciturn than usual, then she really had no one at all to talk to during these long afternoons. 

But she was not quite cross enough yet to bring it up, and so she wandered out of the library and ventured off through the house, not looking for anything in particular. She wandered through the parlour and the dining room, glancing at each end table she passed for the sign of a book that someone might have left unattended, but all she found were elephant statuettes and table linens and a surprisingly large cadre of Indian servants. Most she passed in hallways or outside the half-hidden passages to the servants’ quarters, and they seemed not to be doing anything at all. Perhaps that was how they dealt with the positively oppressive heat. She interrupted one in the breakfast room, polishing glassware. The man, who wore a blue turban and a very impressive white beard, bowed as soon as she entered the room. 

“Forgive me, Kumaari,” he said, making to exit the room. 

“Oh, no, please don’t trouble yourself. I’ll be on my way in a moment,” Kate said, flashing him a smile. The old man paused a moment, but then he returned to his work as Kate circled the room once, in search of something interesting. All she found was a dusty painting of a gentleman she didn’t know and a few discarded newspapers left on her father’s chair. She lingered over these for a moment – the articles left on top detailed increasing tensions with Russia, and a strange magical kerfluffle in London. Neither made any immediate logical sense, and so she left them behind, waving to the old servant as she left. He gave her a tentative smile and she saw that he was missing a tooth or two. She wondered if Rajesh might help him work on his English a bit; his accent had been so thick she’d hardly known what he had said. 

The ground floor of the house had given her nothing near exciting enough, and so she flounced her way up the stairs. The room she shared with Clara was wildly uninteresting, so she passed it by and continued down the hallway. Unexpectedly, the door to her father’s study was ajar. She did not hesitate a moment before slipping inside. 

There were more bookshelves inside the dark room, and she gravitated immediately towards them, but there were fewer books here than downstairs and they were nearly all military histories. She sighed again and turned her attention to her father’s large desk. There were more books and a globe set to one side, and the centre of the desk was strewn with letters – old letters, she realized quickly, from her mother. She scanned the first page for her name or Clara’s, but there was no immediate mention of them and so she turned aside. 

She circled the desk again and saw another statuette that had been mostly hidden by the globe a moment ago. It was, for once, not an elephant, but instead a little gilded lion. She suspected it was meant to be a symbol of English heroism, but she thought its face conveyed more gentleness than fierceness. The carving was very detailed, showing every curl of the lion’s mane. She smiled, wondering how she could ask her father about it without revealing that she’d been in his study without permission. She reached out to stroke it, expecting to feel gilt paint over wood. 

Instead, the little lion disappeared completely.