Summer Update

It's been a summer full of adventure on my part – and not just in the books I've been reading, though trust me, there's been plenty there as well. I spent a week and a half in Sweden. I greatly enjoyed Uppsala and Stockholm, and seeing the crown princess' wedding procession. I then spent 4 weeks working at camps, and then finally got back to home sweet home. As such, I can now stretch my fingers, and get back to shredding up some literature! So far over my summer I have read...

• 
  
  Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
• 
  
  Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Sword of Truth, Phantom, and Chainfire by Terry Goodkind
• Epic by Conor Kostick
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• 
  
  and others...

Currently I am reading a Nicholas Sparks novel and The Reader. I hope to enjoy/hate these enough to be able to write a review. As such, I am working on a positive shredding – Ender's Game. I am also working on The Sword of Truth, and an either/or review: The Bell Jar. Gotta love Sylvia Plath, but she can also be a bit... well, you'll see.

I'll leave you with a quick little blurb about my DeviantArt Group about the art of publishing. It's called Publish-Write. If you are a writer, reader, artist, or art enthusiast, you need to check out Deviantart.com, which is a wonderful site for sharing and appreciating art. I have an account; on deviantArt I am Prosaic-Scriptor.

The group is namely about answering questions people have about publishing – you can join either to pose questions or answer them, it doesn't matter. We will hold weekly FAQ sessions, and other such things to help edit, revise, and review work so it could be published. We're helping people through the publishing process with tutorials and advice. :)

If you have any interest in joining, please do, and I desperately need administrator help/moderator help. It's a hard job to tackle on my own.

Well, I'll have a review up soon – I hope you can wait a little while. I've been working on a nice snarky shredding; you will definitely enjoy, I'm sure.

-BookendGirl

YA Trend Analysis

If you, like me, are an avid YA reader, you might have noticed some new titles in the shelves at your nearest Borders or Barnes & Nobles. Yes... that's right. Vampires are slowly being taken over by angels, those curiously ethereal and fascinating religious figures. Even Kristen Nelson, agent and avid blogger agrees - just look at this post. It's enough to make anyone who has an angel manuscript lying around cringe and bite their nails nervously.

Sadly, I am one of those desperate writers. I've left my NaNo '08 novel lying in a corner after I tore through it and despaired of any writing talent I possessed. I aim to get back to it eventually, of course. I'm simply procrastinating. But damn it, I will get that out. Most definitely. Yeah. Sure. Uh huh. All right, all right... I'm going to need some prodding, no doubt. But still. It's a trilogy. I want to get out a single book first, right? Right?

With books like "Fallen" and "Hush, Hush" slowly absorbing space in the YA spots, I'm going to need to hurry if I want to ride this trend out. So, you want to have the next Twilight? Get your crappy angel novel out soon - oh yes, don't forget to have horrible writing and annoying characters who only call themselves angels. They're not, really.

The only thing that comforts me is that all this angel crap is taking the "Oh, look at me, I'm a fallen angel going to fall in love with a girl" angle. I am not taking that angle, no way. I'd have to work hard to find a mortal character in my book. And it will be awesome.

Reference List of Current Works

• The Senses - Began this one Thanksgiving of eighth grade. I actually really liked it. Should finish it, I'm only 40 pages in. Planned trilogy.
• Tarnished Angels - NaNoWriMo novel of 2008. Finished, around 54,000 words. Stuffed it away when I actually read it. Now I want to completely rewrite it. That's depressing. Planned trilogy, then stand-alone, then...:?
• The Invisibles - NaNoWriMo novel of 2009. Finished at 75,000 words. Letting it sit before I rip into it anew. Stand alone, with possible prequel/late sequel.

So, that's all for me... Off to write the Next Great Angel Novel. :D

- BEG

Update

Well, I'm 26K into my NaNoWriMo novel. I actually like this one - I think it has a bit of a plot. Isn't that crazy? I plan on using Holly Lisle's One-Pass-Revision thing to edit/revise. I know I get bogged down in editing and revising really easily...

In other news, I'm working on two reviews - Where The Wild Things Are (the movie, guys), The Amateurs, and P.C. + Kristin Cast's House of Night series. We'll see how that goes. I wrote an intensely savage review of Twilight, I'll post that up here later.

Hope you all are working hard at NaNoWriMo, if you're doing it.

Good luck,

-BookendGirl

Intro

Hello, my friendly book readers.

My name is BookendGirl. I'll be posting book reviews here - SciFi, Fantasy, YA, Fiction, mostly. But I'm open to many other books, as well.

Be warned - many of these reviews will be horribly cutting and possibly offensive. So get ready.

BookendGirl is here to trim those shelves of yours.

-BG