Being A Writer...

...means your brain now has an excuse for the very very creepy things it dreams up. Last week, this short quip in a conversation popped into my head, so it's been sitting in a note on my iPhone for a bit.

His comment lit a spark in her mind, reminding her of something she'd heard about him when she arrived. She looked up and asked, "You remember when you killed Roddeck?"
His head tipped back as he sighed. "Ugh," he said with an irritated tone to his voice, "Took me an entire day to clean up the mess I made in killing him."

God bless anyone who ever accidentally picks up my phone. No, I'm not a killer. I just write about them.

Poison Study

I'm in love! Tell the world, the whole world, that I'm in love! No, not with a man (okay, I am, but that's another story). No, not with a stripper (Ugh T-Pain). But with a book.

Maria V. Snyder, you are a genius. Or a magician... Maybe both. You writing is so eloquent. I, for one, am glad that you favor analogies and metaphors. They make me happy.

I'm a rapid kindle abuser. By that, I mean I've been known to rip through kindle books at lightning speed, which means my poor boyfriend gets emails from Amazon saying his crazy book buying girlfriend has purchased yet another $9.99 Young Adult Book. Because I have to read Young Adult. Because I write it.

Well, I've been burned a few times. I bought a few books from the $1-$2 range on Amazon because I'm cheap. They were horrible. So after being burned, I did my research. I spent a few hours (no joke) reading reviews and looking for a few things...

• female protagonist
• strong female protagonist
• action
• dystopian, fantasy and/or science fiction... basically just a different world
• a love story
• a strong love story

Finally, I decided on the Poison Study series. I took a leap and purchased the kindle equivalent of a box set - a set of 3 of her books bundled together - for something like $18.99. And oh my gosh am I thrilled. I'm not even finished with Book One yet, and I have never been happier to not be finished with a book.

If you're looking for a sample of her writing (which you will fall in love with from page 1), here's a link to the first chapter of Poison Study on her website. Once you've fallen deeply in love (seriously. you. will.), you may decide you're obsessed and want to be her -- here is her advice for writers.

More on my new obsession later...

Banned Books

According to the list of books on Absoloute Write's post this week (find it here), having a book banned pretty much destines it to be taught in High School classrooms across the U.S.

Okay, I realize that's a logical fallacy. Just because most of the celebrated banned books happen to be schoolroom favorites doesn't necessarily mean that having a book banned will make that happen. But it's still pretty interesting, isn't it?

What is it about us that makes us want to ban books one minute, then teach them to impressionable kids the next?

What do these books have in common? As any good book should, they reveal some hideous things about human nature. So perhaps it's in our nature, too, to bounce back and forth on a pendulum between wanting to hide this nature (by banning the books) and wanting to expose it further (by teaching them).

Here's  a list:

1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses, by James Joyce
7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
9. 1984, by George Orwell
12. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
16. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway
24. Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son, by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
49. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
67. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
74. Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence
11. Lolita, by Vladmir Nabokov

15. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin

38. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren

40. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien

45. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

48. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence

53. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

55. The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

57. Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron

64. Sons and Lovers, by D.H. Lawrence

66. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

73. Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

80. The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer

84. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller

88. An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser

97. Rabbit, Run, by John Updike