Monday, January 9, 2012

Book Review

**We interrupt this book review to bring you a special message from this book blogger.  Okay, so here's the thing, LOTS of people blog reviews.  According to Maggie Stiefvater the world does not need another blog, the world will not care if I do not blog.  BUT I am going to blog and I am going to tell you about the 30 books I am reading this year, AND I am going to do it as if I were passing this book to a high and mighty at my internship.  Which means, let's make movies!  We now return you to this regularly scheduled blog.**


Log-line: Incarceron, the NYT bestselling novel by Catherine Fisher, is The Rock meets The Matrix where fifteen year old FINN tries to escape from a prison that is alive aided from the outside by CLAUDIA the Warden's daughter.

Coverage: Incarceron tells its story from two points of view.  The first is FINN, a boy who lives among some of the most dangerous criminals in Incarceron.  When he receives a key, which he believes will open the locks of the prison, he, his oath brother, an old scholar, and a slave girl embark on a journey to free themselves.  The key it turns out is a link between worlds.  Where we meet CLAUDIA, the daughter of Incarceron's Warden.  Stuck in an a world where time has stopped circa the middle ages, she is engaged to the Prince, and doesn't want to be.  She believes the Prince's older brother, GILES, who died mysterious years earlier.  The two form a friendship and a romantic relationship while trying to free Finn from the prison.  

(**Normally, we give the ending.  But because this is a review and technically NOT coverage, I'll stop there.)

Comments: I started reading this in the midst of finals.  Let me put it to you all this way, I read it ALL while in the taking graduate level finals.  The world is fully formed, both the savage world of the prison and the strictly ordered outside.  The world provides an excellent barriers for our protagonists.  Finn and Claudia must both figure out the underpinnings of their respective worlds in order to free themselves both literally and psychologically.

Finn, Claudia, and the rest of the characters are well developed.  They each have a goal, whether it is to escape, to find a long lost mother, to serve a friend well, or even who am I?  They struggle for the answers sometimes coming up against answers they would rather not face.

The book is fast paced and has the ability to do cross audience business with it's high pack action plot, romance, and the politics.  My suggestion buy this book before another studio snatches it up.

**Update: Incarceron has actually been purchased by 20th Century Fox and is slated for a 2013 release.  Taylor Lautner is attached to play Finn.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Dun, dun, DONE!

That's right, who has a first draft? ME!  So the first draft, well it's probably not fit for human consumption just yet and those of you who have been reading, thank-you!

So I just put the whole she-bang together, as Foxtrot was sitting between three word docs, and the grand total (including epigram) is 53,743 (knowing that I need another character and at least two scenes to flesh out the beginning.).

What an extraordinary accomplishment.

But as I am wont to do, I began to think over some of the things that brought me to this story and really what has inspired me.  These, unfortunately, are not pictures (but you can still see those awesome pictures in that post if you like).

War.  War that seems so far removed.  For most of my life, at least the last ten years, I have lived in a country that is at war.  But you wouldn't know it by looking at the streets or hearing people talk.

History.  I grew up in the middle of the country and was always fascinated by the people who would be paid for a buffalo head.  The bigger the head, the more you would be paid.

Medicine. When I was a child I was constantly surrounded by this profession.  Discussed dissected and taken to some places that were interesting to my.  Having recently revisited this wonderful magical place, where one never has to come up to the surface, I believe I stumbled into what I call the substraits.

Theater.  No seriously.  Or I should say my theatrical education which always makes me question people who write literature about revolutions.  In history and with most revolutions they start in the theater.  Did you know La Marriage de Figaro is said to have sparked the French Revolution.  People unite around art because it is an artists responsibility to hold up a mirror to society and show all of the flaws within.  Where others are beheaded, the artist continues to work.  As far back as the ancient Greeks, theater practitioners have been critiquing their government with their bodies on stage.  Secondly, I was thinking over really different things trying to a) name this thing and b) think of something I could put at the beginning to set the mood for me.  I came upon this quote from one of my FAVORITE plays evah!  I think it sums up some of what I am trying to say....

"Because it is my name!  Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies!  Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang!  How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name."

John Proctor
The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Right, right, good huh?  So with that, I give you all my new title, because Foxtrot was a) totally not the real title and b) it's a hard duck to crack.

Infected
By Gretchen Schreiber

Okays, well I am off to start polishing or just plain reward myself.

Monday, January 2, 2012

A day late, and a dollar up!

Hello, 2012!

This is probably like many others this is where  I reflect on the year and make up some ideas for the year to come.

I label 2011 as the year of change.  It was the year, I graduated undergrad.  It was the year, I moved half-way across the county.  It was the year I got my first real critique partner.  A lot of things changed in 2011, and while I liked it--although I was not prepared for all of it.  My goals for 2011 looked something like this:

1. Have faith in what you do.
2. Try something new as often as possible
3. Finish your novel.

They were some lofty goals.  A tad silly, or at the very least they were worded funny.  Also hard to tell when you've actually achieve your goal.

2012 I am going to label as the year of writing.   Why you ask?  Well because all of my goals have to do with writing or reading as the case may be.  Unlike last years goals, which were awesome these resolutions will hold me accountable.

1. Polish Novel.  This is also known as editing.
2. Send out at least one batch of query letters.
3. Write two pilots.
4.Read at least one book a month AND blog about it.

There is it internets, my 2012 resolutions.