Weekly Writing Check-In: Character Birthdays and...well, nobody cares.

LOL "BIRHDAY".

Oh, Memorial Day weekend! How little you mean to the work-at-home, the freelancers, and the generally unemployed. (Read: me.) But, I am taking a bit of a break today, simply because I'm tired and I'm staring down a 25 page (single spaced in Word) chapter and nooooo not today. That said, editing is coming along as usual. This month I've managed to get through about ten chapters which is no bad business. Meanwhile, earnings are up at Hubpages. Still not making payout yet but I'm not complaining. It's still on the up and that's all that matters from that front! I am also still slogging through McCaffrey's "Acorna" series, and reading it gives me so much faith in myself. Especially in the editing department. Reading a book that has clearly never been edited in its existence really boosts ones own writing confidence~

All that shade thrown, it's May 27th. This date has two significances. The first one is that I've got about four days to prep for Camp. I was hoping to get this other chapter finished (since I like starting Nanos on chapter  breaks) but I don't think that's gonna happen. My best bet is to finish on a scene break. Will make keeping track of my total a bit more difficult, but eh. Somehow, I will manage. (However will I do that?)

The second reason is that May 27th is one of my character's birthdays and for some reason this is the only character birthday I know off the top of my head. All my other characters, I know what month they were born in (and what part, because I know all their signs) but I rarely can remember the dates. Okay. I lied. I know why I know this character's birthday - it's because her birthday passes in the first book of the series, and thus far no other character's birthday in any series gets a little spotlight in the plot. And since I methodically keep track of each day and date that passes (WOOOO 2007! fun fact - after February, 2007 and 2012 have the same days, so her birthday is also over Memorial Day in that year) I know exactly what her birthday is. (Not that I can remember my own at the moment though....)

So this week's check-in question is this: Do you know your characters' birthdays off the top of your head? Do those dates play a part in your plots? Do you even keep track? :P

Oh, and today is Miranda's 40th birthday. She's reaching flaming birthday cake territory.

Best Reads 2011 Blog Hop

EDIT: I have no idea what happened to the formatting in this post. I've tried fixing it multiple times now and nothing's changed. Oh well~

Over at the The Bathroom Monologues, John is encouraging bloggers to write about the best books they read in 2011. Okay!

2011 was the year I kinda-sorta got back into reading. After high school and college, I just never, as in really rarely, read books for pleasure. It just kinda stopped and wasn't a priority anymore. Reading is also a huge emotional investment for me and I just didn't have the spoons to spare until about 2010. Last year I read a total of three books for pleasure - Kushiel's Chosen by Jacqueline Carey, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami. And that was more novels that I had read for pleasure in a half year than in all of college combined.

This year was much better, with the first few months languishing in unemployment and the rest doing so much travel for the job I eventually got. I had a lot of time to read. In total I read eight books this year, most of them huge fantasy tomes from one or two series. For those I just picked my favorite of the series I read this year to talk about.

1. Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey
Also read: Kushiel's Scion

It's pretty safe to say by now that the Kushiel's Legacy series is one of my favorites ever, even after a really rocky start with Kushiel's Dart, the first in the series. And although it took me over a year to get around to reading the next two novels, it was a well-worth wait. The novel here in particular is the best I've read so far, the last of the first trilogy in the series. Watching Phédre's journey from love to loss again, being divinely sent into the bowels of Hell to save her nemesis's son, traveling into the heart of Africa to learn the Name of God and then off to the English Channel to save her childhood friend was thrilling and moving unlike most books I've read, in fantasy or otherwise. Even though I affectionately call this series "The BDSM Porn Novels" they really are much more than that. Setting aside Carey's inability to jump into a story, some irksome style choices, and taking way, WAY too long to explain the history and religious systems (and I'm a religion scholar, so damn yo) it's a great fantasy series that I totally recommend to those with a strong sexual kink stomach. I've started reading the next trilogy in the series, and it's okay so far. But I have a feeling this one will be my favorite out of them all.

2. A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
Also read: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Feast For Crows

I make it no secret that I think Martin is a pretty horrible writer with incredibly problematic situations in his novels, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy them at all. I must if I've read them all up to the latest installment. I bought the first novel on a whim in a Japanese English Bookstore in Nagoya   I watched the show alongside reading the first book, and it was the merits of the show that kept me reading the series even though I raged at the crappy writing more than once, and in public, no less. (Look, I don't give a crap if people are dying all willy-nilly because you're a Badass Up In Here, but when women are getting raped every single page because LOL IT'S WAR your penis-privilege is showing.) Anyway, this novel is the best of the series thus far. So much drives the plot forward, and on more than one occasion I had a OH NO YOU DIDN'T moment. (Mostly, the epilogue. Hoshit. Red Wedding? Not so much. It was written horribly and anticlimatic.) Also it has the best cover. So yeah.

3. All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

This is especially poignant considering McCaffrey's death recently. I used to be a big fan of hers when I was a bb author in middle school, and I picked this up, one of the few early Pern novels I had yet to read, at the airport before blasting off for Japan. It's very McCaffrey. It's a good thing I had read the previous novels because there are SO MANY CHARACTERS with little to no development that, had I not known any of them, it would've been awful.  The story is kinda interesting. I had read the novels before and the couple after, but not this one in-between, so it answered a few questions I had during The Skies of Pern years ago. There isn't much to say about this novel. It was a short read, not the best one, but very nostalgic for me nonetheless. I will be damn glad to never read anything about the basic-ass Jaxom again, though. (Also, it's really weird to realize years later that F'lar is abusing Lessa, but hey who cares right. ~It's from another time*)

4. After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Another airport pickup. The premise of this seemed interesting, but Murakami is a HUGE hit or miss for me. And this was a miss. Again. I just can't get into his style, thanks. This book was just too weird even for me. I had no idea what he was doing or why and I am honestly okay with being ~left in the dark~ ohohoho. Whatever, I only read it because I'm a Japanese Studies graduate and to weeaboos he is the only author to ever happen in Japan. Actually, I really liked the Chinese prostitute/love hotel subplot, and the Denny's bickering was hilarious at times, but the whole thing with the MC's sister and..whatever...the hell...was going on with that (it was never explained) was enough to drive me away from this novel. So, this is probably the worst novel I read in 2011. But it's still on the best list because I didn't read that many different things. :(

Hopefully with my new Kindle Fire I can read more than 8 novels this year, ha. I usually read one in 2 weeks - month, so here's to 12! 

Pern's Progenitor Dies: RIP Anne McCaffrey, 1926 - 2011

She had badass tastes in animals tbqh.

I'm going to take a break from talking about Nano today to talk about something else entirely - something pretty important to me that I didn't even know was important to me until today.

As most of you have probably heard by now, acclaimed and groundbreaking science-fiction / fantasy (ssh! don't tell her I said that second one!) author Anne McCaffrey has died of a "massive stroke" at the age of 85. I consider Anne to be one of my greatest influences as an author, even though over the years I've found most of her works I once read incredibly problematic if not sometimes outright unbearable as a queer feminist. But when it comes to memorials we're wont to focus on the good, the proud, and the mighty. So here it is.

Even though I recently no longer "enjoy" her works (although I still read many out of nostalgia and habit), to say that Anne McCaffrey had a profound influence on me is a grand understatement. I stumbled into the attic one day during sixth grade, nosing around in my mother's old book collection (in the midst of all my grandmother's lulzy harlequins) and found this super-60s-rific book called "Dragonflight". And there were a lot of others there too, but since that's the one that started them all, well... (Should also note that Patricia A. McKillip's "The Riddlemaster of Hed" trilogy was up there as well, but I've always found that series to just be...trite. And weird, man.)

Anyway, I asked my mom about them and she said that they were her favorite books as a kid. Today when I told her the news she said she was remembering how she first picked up "Dragonflight" at a convenience store on a road trip to Indiana from California with her family back in the 60s. My mother was so into these books that she wrote fanmail to Anne (and got a letter back with a PICTURE that she's since lost, of course) and wrote super shitty fanfiction when she wasn't listening to her BFF's Star Trek porn. She also made all her husbands read the series over the years. Oh, and she's now a fantasy / science-fiction librarian (well, she's a children's librarian who also happily runs those sections) because of Anne McCaffrey. She was kind of a big deal to my mother.

So I read them. I've always loved fantasy and hey DRAGONS ARE COOL, and women authors are even cooler. I read through them all very fast. Yes, all of them. The original trilogy, followed by the "Harper Hall" trilogy (those blow btw), followed by all the other singular books over the years minus a couple I've never gotten around to read. And they're some of the only books I've reread. (I've  never even reread Harry Potter, so there you go.) Not only did I read them, but when I started reading them I recommended them to my reading-minded classmates as well and soon everyone who made reading a hobby in my tiny class (so, you know, all five of us) were reading Anne's works, even if not limited to the Pern series. I have distinct memories of sixth grade bus rides and Language Arts classes and a lot of us talking about lulzy Pern crap.

This was when I was starting to get into writing my own original fiction, and what I was reading at the time heavily influenced my ideas - and since I was reading Anne's books, it followed that I was writing fantasy in a similar vein to hers. And I can't lie...when I was reading "All The Weyrs of Pern" for the first time earlier this year, I recognized a lot of my writing style still in hers. Quick summarizing sentences, snappy dialogue, and men and women who just wanna get down and party under the sheets with each other (well maybe that last one is more me than her, but I'm totally telling you guys she was the one who made me start writing smut. My first love scenes were Anne's, even though they're righteously horrible rofl). Obviously I've developed my own unique style that's all my own since then, but the roots are very "McCaffrey". It's why even though now I don't really associate with her content, I still can't deny she's had the heaviest influence on me over any other author, with Philip Pullman coming in a distant second.

Over the past few years she's more or less disappeared from writing (doing mostly behind the scenes outlining) while her son Todd McCaffrey has taken over the universe. My mother isn't a big fan of his and I admittedly have never tried him. I don't know if I'll ever finish the "series" any time soon. In my world Pern is pretty much the first six books since that's what I had as a kid and that's where my imagination took hold. I never saw eye to eye with her on a lot of things...she was very anti fanfiction (say whut. WHUT. I don't even like writing/reading fanfiction but damn gurl.) and very vehement that she wrote super srs science-fiction. (Yeah k. You keep telling yourself that about your DARGONZ Anne). But when I saw today that she died I knew it was gonna have a weird impact on me. And it has. It's like seeing a piece of your imagination die. Anne McCaffrey defined being a female fantasy author for me when I was first realizing that was the path I wanted to take in my life. She gave me the courage to write my own fiction, to explore creatures and lands that no one else knew, and to write some fucking smut. (I write better love scenes than she does though, just FYI. Also: more lesbians.) And even though all those books were years ago, it's so weird to know that she's not around anymore.

This probably sounds silly, but when I was looking for images of her I saw a lot of fanart and "real art" of her with her dragons, and it made me tear-up. Not for her, but for all of us authors (particular fantasy) authors who live with whole worlds inside our heads that only we ever visit. For a lot of us we use writing to escape the real world and to go where we control what happens, even if for a short time. Seeing those pictures made me hope that one day, when my life is also over, maybe I can finally see these worlds I've seen in my head for so long for myself. It was very comforting.

Rest in peace, Anne. Thank you for all you've done for me. Have the best fucking mating flight of your life - get that bronze, gurl.Also pretty sure the dragons mourn louder for you than they did for Robinton, just sayin'.