Wattpad

Wattpad is an awesome website where you can upload your own content for free reading. It’s the home of fanfiction and indie writers. It’s aimed at mobile users – people with smart phones, etc – but anyone can join and read free books and works in progress (WIP). I joined a few weeks ago and yesterday I posted my first story.

The Archive of Lost Dreams is available on Wattpad. I’ll be slowly uploading all of my content on to Wattpad: that means all the Storm Front stories and a serialised version of The Edge of Darkness.

I’m toying with the idea of keeping a WIP on there as well, and updating it as I write it, but I don’t write linearly (as much as I try to) and as much as writing is a hobby for me, I am trying to treat it like a job. I’m going back and filling in empty places in The Oncoming Storm (working title) and I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting a first draft up on the website, anyway.

It might be an idea for the future, though, especially as I am going to attempt to use Camp NanoWriMo as extra motivation to get some more novels done this year.

I’d like to know your opinion: would you like to read a work in progress, or would you prefer I serialise a completed, edited and polished novel? Would you like to see how I work, or would you rather wait for the final product?

Camp NaNoWriMo

Because of the success of the two NaNoWriMo events I’ve been involved in (two wins, one published novel and working on the second one as I type), and because I have more book ideas than I have time to write them, I’ve decided to participate in this year’s Camp NaNoWriMo.

It’s being run in both June and August, and I’m planning on writing the majority of a YA paranormal novel in one month and about half of a YA high fantasy in the other. I’ll work on finishing them in the off season before NaNoWriMo starts and I’ll have to decide which book to write in November! Luckily I have about a dozen ideas in my head at any one time.

I’ll be blogging about the effort as well, like I did last year. (Holy carp fish, that’s a scary thought!)

This probably means that I should try to get all those books from the library read because for the first time I’ll be working whilst pounding out 1612 or 1667 words a day.

You can find me at Camp NaNo here, and at NaNoWriMo here.

Wish me luck!

Review: Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1) by Marissa Meyer

Publisher: Fiewel & Friends
Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Young Adult
Pages: 387 (hardcover)
Release Date: January 3 2012
Source: Purchased.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars.

Blurb (from Amazon.co.uk)

A forbidden romance.

A deadly plague.

Earth’s fate hinges on one girl…

CINDER, a gifted mechanic in New Beijing, is also a cyborg. She’s reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s sudden illness. But when her life becomes entwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she finds herself at the centre of a violent struggle between the desires of an evil queen – and a dangerous temptation.

Cinder is caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal. Now she must uncover secrets about her mysterious past in order to protect Earth’s future.

This is not the fairytale you remember. But it’s one you won’t forget.

Review (full review posted on Goodreads.com)

I was looking forward to reading this book, but it’s even better than the blurb makes it sound. It’s better than I expected it to be.

I don’t normally like retellings, because most of them aren’t very original. How can you be original, when you’re basically re-working someone else’s work and passing it off as your own? (*cough*fanfiction*cough*) (I don’t actually have a problem with fanfiction, only fanfiction that then gets published and tries to pass itself off as original fiction.)

But Cinder, to me, is highly original. It’s an interesting book. Half of it is predictable because it’s a re-worked Cinderella myth – so you know there’s going to be a handsome prince, an evil stepmother, and ball and a missing shoe. You know roughly how it’s going to go down. The Cinderella myth is so well recognised that we can put those elements to the back of our minds and start identifying elements that don’t belong. This is where the book becomes predictable: in the foreshadowing.

The original part of the book is in its protagonist, Cinder. She’s a cyborg, in case the cover and blurb didn’t clue you in. I have a not-so-secret confession: I FREAKING LOVE CYBORGS. I love the whole question of whether the transformation is voluntary or not and how one comes to terms with that. Cinder struggles with her identity all throughout the novel. She struggles with a past she doesn’t remember and a future she doesn’t want. I loved reading about her. Normally I don’t like books written in third person POV – I feel more intimate and involved in first person. And I admit, the point of view changes did at first make me suspicious. They are necessary, of course: it’s limited POV from Cinder, and when Cinder’s not there to make an observation we still need to know what’s going on. It’s well handled, and although at first I felt a bit jerked around, I soon adjusted and got on with enjoying the story.

Enjoying the story is really what it’s all about. Forget how predictable it is –it is really only predictable because of foreshadowing – and readers need foreshadowing so authors don’t just suddenly throw the big information out – and you’ll really enjoy how beautiful the prose, the characterisation, the worldbuilding and the originality is. Meyer is a master, and certainly more capable than her more famous name-sharer. She’s taken an age-old fairy story and really made it her own in stunning style.

Prince Kai makes it to my shelf of awesome YA male love interests. He’s so genuine and unassuming. He’s swoon-worthy and, despite being royalty, very realistic. I consider myself a republican, but I’d follow his monarchy any day… That’s not meant to sound as dirty as it does, I mean it quite literally.

The worldbuilding is one of a kind. I even asked a question about something that I should have waited and found out for myself, because it did get addressed. I really enjoyed finding out about this world, and how it came to be, and what the fuck the Lunars were.

My ONE teeny tiny problem with the book is something very small. I like to have emotional reactions to books. When a book makes me cry, you can pretty much guarantee it’s going to be a 5 star ratings. I didn’t have the emotional reaction I should have had when something in particular happened to a particular character. I was saddened, yes, even though this was a character I didn’t particularly like. This is because I had grown attached to this character through Cinder. However, in places I laughed out loud, especially when Adri had her stepmother’s comeuppance at the ball.

Did I mention how much I loved Iko? She was surprisingly well-written for an android. I want one!

Back to Cinder! She’s awesome. Did I mention that? I mean… REALLY awesome. She’s totally one of the most capable and independent YA heroines I’ve ever read. She gives as good as she gets, and despite being the Cinderella character, doesn’t weakly let her stepmother walk all over her. Sure, there’s a relationship dynamic that you can’t ignore which often leads to Cinder being less well off, but that’s conflict, right? That’s part of the Cinderella myth. Poor, downtrodden, dressed-in-rags Cinderella goes to the ball and dances with the prince, much to the chagrin of the stepmother.

I am for sure looking forward to the next three books in this series. I want to see how masterfully Meyer handles the other three myths, and how they intertwine with Cinder’s story and the Lunar Chronicles.

Review: Draykon (Draykon #1) by Charlotte E English

Publisher: Charlotte E English
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Pages: 281 pages estimated (ebook)
Release Date: August 31 2011
Source: Purchased.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

Blurb (from Amazon.co.uk)

When shy and retiring Llandry Sanfaer discovers a mesmerising new gemstone, she suddenly becomes the most famous jeweller across the Seven Realms. Demand for the coveted stone escalates fast; when people begin dying for it, Llandry finds that she herself has become a target.
Lady Evastany Glostrum has her life in pristine order. Prestigious, powerful and wealthy, she is on the verge of crowning her successes with the perfect marriage. But when her closest friend is murdered for the jewellery she wears, Eva is drawn into the mystery surrounding the curious “istore” gem.
The emergence of the stone is causing chaos across the Seven. Gates between the worlds are opening at will, pulling hordes of creatures through from the shadowy Lower Realm and the glittering Uppers. As Eva works to discover the culprit behind the spreading disorder, Llandry must learn the truth about her precious istore stone – before she herself becomes a victim.

Review (full review posted on Goodreads.com)

Charlotte has an obvious gift for beautiful prose and many a time I caught myself drooling over her wonderfully constructed sentences. Her word choices are elegant. She doesn’t just choose simple words to get the point across, either, but words that are musical and almost seem to jump off the page. Harmonious, that’s what it is. But I didn’t have to crack open my dictionary to discover the meaning of any of the words. It was just nice clean beautiful prose, and ten times better than a lot of legacy books out there. Both the voice and the style have been developed beautifully and executed better than I expected.

Her characterisations are very fine and three dimensional. Often I could feel Eva’s susceptibility to the cold and Llandry’s social anxiety, which were both large parts of the character identification. They even had different voices, which is rare to find in indie fiction. That’s why this book is a gem, people! I loved the way Eva dealt with people and could feel the pressure on her to succeed and be seen to be successful. And there are much worse things than being in Llandry’s head as she suffers and deals with her social anxiety.

I would have liked to know how Llandry developed from the fearless child into the anxious wreck she is as an adult, but Draykon has a sequel, Lokant, and I hope we’ll find out there.
Sigwide was so adorably cute. Charlotte clearly has a gift for writing non-anthropomorphised fantasy animals. I loved reading about him: his reactions all seemed very real and he was just so cute! Where can I get an orting?

The worldbuilding was rather lovely. I’m not sure I have a firm grasp on everything, because it’s unlike anything I’ve read before. A lot of the clearly non-human sentient people were called humans, even when they had wings, for example, so I’m still trying to come to terms with that. I don’t fully understand why there needed to be the land and Cloak divide between the Daylanders and the Darklanders but I imagine it came about as the people grew more aware that they could manipulate their own environment, much like the benefits of electricity for us real-world humans. After all, if you’re a nocturnal creature, what could be better than night all the time? And if you have sorcerers able to do that sort of thing, why not give yourself a natural advantage?

The only thing I will mention that was not perfect (besides the occasional typo – not more so than any legacy published novel, so it’s not an issue, and the ever so slight ‘who said that?’ moment when it came to dialogue) is the fight scenes. They seemed not as perfect as the rest of the prose. Polished, yes, and lovingly written, that much is obvious. It doesn’t in any way let the novel down, but after growing accustomed to Charlotte’s high standard prose, her descriptions which never became overwhelming and were just enough to build the world in my head, her wonderful characterisations and the very real relationships between the characters, the fight scenes by comparison (and remember, everything else was top-notch) seemed a little weak, a little off in pace. Almost like a tuba solo in the middle of a glorious symphony. Perhaps Charlotte is not comfortable writing violence, or not as practiced as her gorgeous political banter, high societal manners, and worldbuilding that I enjoyed reading about so much.

That being said, I need to reiterate that the fight scenes were still of a higher quality than I’ve read in legacy books. They just don’t seem to match the rest of the novel in its perfection.

As for the plot: well, she wasn’t kidding when she billed it as a fantasy mystery. After the appropriate amount of building questions, the revelations were revealed at just the right time. I thought the plot was going one way and it ended up going another way. I also have a suspicious mind so I kept expecting a certain character who shall not be named to be a betrayer, the sort of ‘Ha ha ha, I’ve been playing with you all along’ type thing, but that didn’t happen. The novel seems quite innocent in that regard. Almost everything was neatly wrapped up at the end, with just enough left unanswered to make a sequel appealing.

It’s not a YA book, but it’s a clean read and because of Llandry’s not-quite-grown-up attitude it could be marketed so. I believe a lot of young people would be able to relate to Llandry’s need for independence and her overbearing and overprotective parents wanting to keep her safe.

I’m really looking forward to Lokant, and the third book, Orlind, which was recently released.