A New Idea

Quick post, a new idea just popped into my head. I listening to “Take It All Away” by Red and got this great image of bloody footprints across a floor of gold in a palace, just in front of two thrones. And I’ve been wanting to work on something new lately, so to force an idea I was thinking I could do a kind of mash up with the songs that have been in my head the most lately, then take the lyrics I find the most moving, the mess them together to form a fairly comprehensive plotline (to me anyway.) The songs I found ended up being:

Take It All Away by Red

Lose Control by Evanescence

Perfect Nightmare by Shontelle

It’s My Life by Bon Jovi

My Love by Sia

Heavy in Your Arms by Florence and the Machine

Russian Roulette by Rihanna

I’m So Sick by Flyleaf

Situations by Escape the Fate

When They Come For Me by Linkin Park

Weak and Powerless by A Perfect Circle

Cuz I Can by Pink

She Moved Through the Fair by Skully (As to be seen on “The Hollow” website – a book by Jessica Verday)

So I’m going to try it. Wish me luck, I might post the mash up on here when I’m finished with it.

Book Reviews

I’ve decided, out of both boredom and procrastination, while I’m writing (82300 words as of right this second – whoot!) I’m going to start writing book reviews, something I have no idea how to do and never have had the pleasure to try it. I think I could be good at it though, so as of next week (hopefully) I’ll start with my English project Graceling. (A 4/10 if not less, the pacing sucks.) See you then, if I don’t drop off the face of the earth again. 🙂

The Rise of the Ultimate Character Creation Sheet

In case you did not see the change, I’ve added a tab to the left called “Writing Aids.” Within said tab, is something of my own invention: The Ultimate Character Creation Questionnaire Worksheet (which should really get a shorter name, now that I’ve written it out several times.) It’s a mixture of all the character sheets I’ve had the pleasure of searching through, into one big six-page character questionnaire/detail sheet. Please use to your convenience. And thank me in the comments, because I like that sort of thing. Feedback is also appreciated, thank you.

First Sentances

I’m bored, and I thought maybe it would be interesting to see all of these in a row. They don’t give much away, so I don’t feel too bad about letting you see them.  If there is even a you to speak of.

Divine Wars Prequel 1: The Nature of Temptation – “In the beginning there was light.”

Divine Wars Prequel 2: Lusifyr Risen – “My name is Arazorn rae á Bloii Aerdaen á Leadaen Lusifyr divinely ordained king of the second world, and I remember my death as clearly as if it was yesterday.”

Divine Wars 1: Stripped of Darkness – “There was something rather compelling, he decided, about a good story.”

Divine Wars 2: Fire and Ice – “In all of my existence, I have never been more distraught than in this moment.”

Nightlife: A Year and a Day – “When I entered to Blood Rose, a drunken, broken man, I didn’t realize that this night would come with it my chance at freedom.”

Nightlife: Minutes to Midnight – “Blood. That blessed substance which rules our life, which run through our veins and guards against the cold hands of death.”

Nightlife: The Ballad of Alice – “In dreams, the mind becomes a cold and senseless thing with no real means of logical thought, or process.”

Nightlife: The Raven – “She was easily the most powerful, deadly and beautiful creature Seth had ever seen.”

Nightlife: A Dead Life – “The game was easy for those that knew how to play it, and Nikolai de Night had had years of practice to learn how to do just that.”

Stephanie’s Story: “I, Stephanie Grey, do so submit these words to the page in hopes that it shall travel farther than I.”

Moonlight Reign: “Dreams flashed in front her eyes, memories and bloody visions.”

In Black and White: “It was interesting how the light of the mid-afternoon sun glinted off of the sparkling river, the rocks glinting like hidden diamonds, the crimson sky burned from the scorching August sun.”

The Perks of Adrenaline

I was just thinking, after much writing procrastination as I am prone to, how odd everyday life is for me. It reminds me, sort of, of why I’m always so sluggish and boring and moody. It’s sorta because I preprogrammed myself to be when I took up the writing pen. One needs to be able to turn your emotions every which way as a writer, I think. It helps with all sorts of things. The easiest way to do this, I’ve found, is through music. But, as a crappy side effect, my normal life without music in the background somewhere kinda sucks. I’m just sort of in limbo, without any of the cool, rushing emotions like I have when I’m writing. It reminds me of what we were talking about in class the other day, about how dopamine is the satisfaction of getting something you need, something you crave, the thing that gets you hooked on drugs. Then there’s adrenaline, which makes you focus and, admit it, dark. Both of these things I get mainly from music. Lily was telling me a couple of days ago that I operate better with a soundtrack. We were doing archery in gym class, and other students were playing DDR, and simply because the music was there, playing loudly and reverberating through me, I suddenly got better, more focused. I’d like to think that I can Fade into it, sometimes, or at least that’s what I feel like. I can get pictures from it, feelings. That’s what music is to me, and because I operate better with it – hell, am able to function at all with it – I’m suddenly an adrenaline and dopamine junky, albeit a fairly reserved one.

Which brings up another point that I was thinking about: why is it that I also function better right about now, circa midnight, and am exhausted and ordinary in the daylight? Is it because I’m usually playing my music, or watching movies that provoke the same effects? Or is it simply because it is the nighttime, and we, as humans, are preprogrammed to be more alert, more cautious when the moon is in the sky? Or is it even simply than that, and simply because, that for most people, nighttime becomes the few hours where your true personality flourishes, where you mind can become what it wants, with no prodding from human thoughts and human worries? Is it simply because we are more primitive, more animatistic, and we are all closet adrenaline junkies, out looking for a fix?

Ten Minutes Later…

Okay, I know I just was ranting about how the song “Anything For You” was completely Konnor, and it made me freak out. Well I was wrong. It’s from Nightlife. But it’s not his. Oh, god, it’s not his!

It’s Anthony’s. Which makes me want to cry, because the song is suddenly so different with it being his. I can’t express it now. I might just have to go sob in a corner. Poor, poor, Anthony. What the hell did I do to that poor boy? It’s almost criminal how much I hurt him.

He has a happy ending though, so I can have a little bit of solice in that. Now, excuse me, while I go and write.

Konnor, Corrin, and Music

I wish I remembered my dreams, so that I could remember dreaming about my characters. Especially Corrin and Konnor. The two of them facinate me. They’re so unalike, but yet they stay by each others side like brothers. “A vengeful God and the merciful Lucifer” as put by Konnor.

I’ve just downloaded another couple of Evanescence songs I’ve never heard of, and I found “Anything For You”, as well as “Eternal”. Both of which are awesome to write to, though the former, is completely, consumingly Konnor. I had a bit of a freak out when I heard it the first time. Parcially because his love is so beautiful, so eternal, and so completely doomed that I feel sorry for what I put him through. Or rather, what Kane puts him through. But, then, no one knows about that, do they?

I’m especially upset that no one in the world knows who Konnor is- besides Lily, and she really doesn’t count because she doesn’t know the whole story either. But he is probably the most interesting, most devilish character I’ve written in a long time. I want so desperately to finish his story, but the only problem is that I know what happens at the end and the middle of the story, not the begining. And, if i’ve learned well from the botched attempt at outlining, I need to write a story all the way through in order to get it done. But, after reading about how Stephanie Meyer started Twilight in the middle, it makes me wonder if I should just start it that way. It’ll be a lot of work, but it might be worth it.

It just might see daylight afterall, no pun intended.

Rachel, though, is a problem, as is Draven. The two of them end up having a relationship, but I don’t know how it’ll play out. I’m sort of waiting for it to do that out on paper, and they’ll figure it out for themselves. Which makes my whole “start in the middle” idea go to hell. Ugh! They’re so annoying. Why can’t they just tell me what’s going to happen so I don’t have to live in all this suspense?

But no, my character’s like to suprise me. Fancy that, they like seeing me freak out almost as much as I like watching other people freak out. Lucky me.

Like, for instance, I was writing Logan’s chapter, discribing how he had saved Silas’s life when they were thirteen, and there was an undertone there that I could almost consider love- and it brought to mind the nature of friendship, and how it was only a downplayed version of love. So, I asked myself, has any of my Divine tried to take those friendships one step further, like…Xsen and Arazorn maybe?

The answer came back with a vauge sense of nonchalance. “Of course,” they said, “We’ve all had flings now and again.” At one point or another, they told me, there was certain pairings between all sort of characters, gender aside. And what does it matter? At the time it happened, there was no reason for it to be considered wrong.

And so, now, thanks to my characters who are probably giggling at my frustrations and embaressment, I can not get the image of Sara and Dianna kissing out of my head. Thanks a lot!

But I digress. “Feels Like Home” by Fort Minor is also a good Nightlife song, as is- ironically enough, seeing as it just started playing- “Understanding” by Evanescence. “Lose Control” I just figured out fits Lily’s book, so now it is banned from all my playlists. “Farther Away” was always good, I just happened to find a new version of it that fits the character better.

And, now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve devided up my playlists according to my mood: “Apassionata,” “Beat the Clock,” “Better to Have Loved and Lost,” “Caught in the Rain,” “Darkness, Consuming,” “Dead Before Dawn,” “Death Becomes Me,” “Going Dark,” “Just Plain Pissed” (can’t you guess?), “Keep Me Here,” “Live Only Once,” “Love at First Kiss,” “The Seduction,” “A Slave to Passion,” “Solemnly Serene,” “Trance” and “The End Must Come.”  Can you guess which one is which?

Elvish and Musings

It’s been a while since I last bothered to write in here, and since my last entry I’ve been busy setting up this new computer I got for Yule. Tis very awesome, and I’m liking it a lot. In the pictures I post here, you should be able to see the pretty ring I got on them.

Those pictures, by the way, are of the very cool elvish that was written all over my arms- by Lily. She’s very good at it. In fact, she’s at home right now- I think anyway- designing things so that she can do a henna tattoo for me and my mom tomorrow. It’s a big thing: I’m re-dyeing my hair, and redoing my nails, getting a henna tattoo and getting my eyebrows waxed. A whole primping deal, but it’ll be fun because Lily will be there, and my mom and her friends. It’s always fun. We listen to too loud music and talk about books and movies and our opinions on things.

I got a whole bunch of books for Christmas too, one of which I finished: Swoon by Nina Malkin. It was…interesting, to say the least.  Very nice and sweet and sexy and dark with a sad ending that makes your heart ache. Ah, and Sinclair Youngblood Powers, the boy with the devil-may-care attitude, set on vengeance, reborn without the burden of a soul- the last being a mistake that the main character, Candice- Dice, for short- will eventually regret. But have hope when you read it. It’s not all sex and drugs- it’s actually pretty cool, in a Tithe kind of way. It ended up lingering on my mind, so I guess that means it was worthy for me to have bothered with. But be prepared. It’s very unconventional, and a ride that goes so fast, when it ends it feels like you’re still moving. Read this, too, it explains it better then I can.

And now I’m almost finished with another, called Intertwined by Gena Showalter, which is written for those of a much lower reading level then myself, which makes it a bit juvenile, but damn is it good. give it another hundred pages worth of detail and I would be in love. The coolest book you ever did see plotwise…if your willing to put up with the writing.

So little has changed since the last time I ranted. I’ve figured out a way to get Werewolf Games into the Nightlife plotline, which makes it a lot more interesting, actually, and brings depth to a character that had otherwise been flat. It destroyed one of the vampire lineages, but it was worth it I think. Asilinn was too awesome a character to just forget about, the perfect mix of arrogance, nonchalance, and damaged goods. And now you get to meet Raymond. Twice. Woohoo!

What else…I have a short story finished for after the end of the Divine Wars series…one I really enjoyed writing, and that will make all fans miserable, if they’re anything like me. Then there’s Corrin, the incredibly horrible Corrin who’s story I promised would never get published, and now, intertwining together the story of Divine Wars and Nightlife kind of made it necessary.

The rest…what rest? I’ve got nothing to tell. My life is very boring. Peaceful even. I’m sitting with my door open, letting in a slight chill to my otherwise stifling hot room, listening to the background music of Aladdin and Connor dancing around the room to it. Caitlin fell asleep an hour ago. Tis a nice sound, the sound of the peacefulness. It kind of makes me miss having small kids in the house. It kind of makes me think about me having kids.

Alas, a story unfolds! My grandmother and I and the rest of the family all decided when the new year rolled in that everyone would write down what they and everyone else would be doing in ten years. Almost every one of them said that I would be married with a kid. I’m a little depressed by this, actually, because I’m quite doubtful it ever will happen, and doubtful I even want it to happen. All these women around me that bitch about being pregnant. I don’t want it. I’d rather take care of myself and look beautiful, thank you. Growing old is not on my to-do list. It might even be my biggest fear. Lucky for me, the women in my family age gracefully, even if they do crap to themselves at my age.

But still, I’m almost afraid to have kids. Most normal kids bitch and moan about things to their parents and those that don’t, like me, end up feeling like crap because they bottle it all up. I don’t know which I could possibly deal with in my children. I care to much about people, especially my family, to have to deal with raising a kid right.

Sigh. And now I’m monologuing. Nothing more to do now then to think about my future…I’ll be musing.

Damnit! I did it again…

I told myself I wouldn’t. No. I swore that I wouldn’t go there. No demons. No witches. That goes into territories that I should never be alowed into. I’d already destroyed the vampire myth, lets not destroy the myths of angels and devils, of witches and magic, more than what I already have. But, of course, thanks to the new flyleaf CD, I am going to have to go and write it. And not only that, but I’m going to have to go and add another map to my wall, come up with a new cast of characters, run the plot into the ground and work with how demon blood works.

Promises be damned, aparently. I’m going to write it whether I like it or not.

Yet, in a way, I really do want to write it. It’s got some amazing characters, case and point from the Flyleaf CD. That’s how this whole thing got started. I heard the new song called “Again” and listened to it, trying to figure out which vampire it belonged too, but none of them were fessing up. It was bugging me, because I knew it was important, and I knew the character was very strong and very forceful, and really wanted to get me to write about him. So, frowning, I serfed Behind The Name for a good name that means “strong,” and ended up settling on a name that fit the idea of the character very well: Jerek. So, quite pleased with myself, I went over the lyrics to flesh out my new character. For the life of me, though, I could not see this noble spirit in a modern setting. In fact, all I could see him in was a castle, swordfighting…sitting on top of a stone wall…looking out to a ramshakel little village… with a woman’s hand on his cheek as she pleads with him, but he turns away…and talking with a boy with blonde hair. This last image was the most forceful, because it’s less talking and more arguing.  I frowned at this, and went over who it might be. Cian? No. He didn’t feel like Cian, didn’t have his cockiness. I thought for a little while longer, and then I got it.

Jerek was from Nightlife, but he wasn’t a vampire, wasn’t a werwolf, and didn’t belong in a modern setting, and did not belong among vampires and werewolves.

Some might be asking, how the hell does that work? I thought you said that there was only vampires and werewolves and the general humans in Nightlife. How can he be none of those? Well, I’ve mentioned Corrigan’s Story, I think, where a half-demon boy lives in slavery under the ruler of a great city which is completely full of vampires and werewolves and demons and angels and witches… I never bothered to do anything about it because it involved demons and witches and angels, which I didn’t want to try and deal with. But this song, and this new character convinced me that it’s worth picking up.

Another story I promised myself I wouldn’t continue on with: the Thirteen Cities, spurred both from an idea from something I read and a half-assed attempted at co-writing with Lily. It never got really far, because there is a large chunk of the begining that I didn’t want to write because all it was there was because it was supposed to explain what would happen later. I’d guess that when finished, this would have amounted to at least thirty to fifty pages, an amount I really didn’t want to write. However, now I’m considering pulling the cheep writer’s card and erasing his memory at a certain point so that I can just start writing right there at the begining of the fun. Unfortunately, it would be cutting it rather close to the the fun, but I could very easily deal with that. I could always write about it, and cut it out later. But, unfortunately, this is not a good thing. It just makes it one more thing for me to be thinking about, one more thing for me to try and write. Out of the many I already have going, another is making me crazy. I have a problem settling on only one now, so how could I possibly force myself to write when I have a deadline. I don’t do well with other people telling me what to do, which sucks for you people, doesn’t it?

Speaking of which, I changed my name again, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t remember if I explained the fact that I talk to people in my head, but if I have and even if I haven’t, I took the name from my creativity and my intellegence. It seems to kind of suit me.

I’m getting quite depressed that you don’t know anything about any of my characters. I feel like putting something up on here for you just so that I can continue on with my life without being slowly driven crazy. But that’s dangerous. I’m so afraid someone’s going to try to steal him- and you have no idea the humor that phrasing has brought to mind. With my character’s being so real, and Cian being the most cooperative for me, I bet he’d put up a hell of a fight for anyone that tried to tackle his character but me. So, if I do put up his sotry in a burst of insanity, then no one had better touch him or your going to get your teeth knocked out, I don’t care who or where you are. I will hunt you down and kill you. So please, stay away from my character’s and my ideas. I work hard on those.

Stephanie Meyer seemed to get really depressed when someone leaked her book on the internet. I personally would just get really really angry. And speaking of Stephanie Meyer, who’s going to see New Moon on the 20th? If you are, don’t tell me how it ends- even though I know because I read the book- I’m going on the 21st wearing my Jacob shirt, Edward be damned.

Over and out.

Happy Samhain! [And a Nightlife Rant…]

…or Halloween, if you don’t know what Samhain is. Go look it up. My mother corrected my pronunciation yesterday, I had thought that it was pronounced how it was spelled (Sam-hay/n), but really it’s supposed to sound like (Sow-an) because the original spelling looked like “Sauin”. I love the ancient Celts, as you can obviously tell. And, if it’s less obvious, I’m going a little crazy lately. It might just be that Samhain was yesterday, and I’m all jittery from the candy and the fact that I’ve written close to twenty pages this weekend, which tops all the writing I’ve done this year. (Unfortunately not for NaNoReMo, which I had forgotten all about until just this second, and I don’t know what I could possibly write for it. At this rate I’m not going to do it after all.) It’s not just the quantity of my writing that surprises me, but what the writing’s about. Because, you see, when I began writing about vampires, I promised myself to leave out all the inappropriate stuff, let it be there, but be implied, so that I won’t have to deal with it. Sadly enough, though, all that stuff I didn’t want to write about has become an intricate part of the storyline. My vampires have become, essentially, the place where I write about the things I don’t usually have the courage to write about in my other things. A dumping ground for my hormones.

To go along with this insanity, I’ve been listening to the music I’ve always promised myself I would stay away from. On my current playlist, I have Akon [Right Now and Sexy Bitch], Boys Like Girls [Love Drunk], Cherish [Killa], Cascada [Evacuate the Dancefloor], Katy Perry [I Kissed a Girl], Muse [Undisclosed Desires and Uprising], Britney Spears [Shattered Glass, Circus, 3, and If You Seek Amy], Beyonce [Sweet Dreams], and Jason Derulo [Whatcha Say]. All of which scares the hell out of me, because of the mood it gets me in. I write best when I’m in a mood that fits what I’m writing, and when your writing sex scenes, then what mood do you have to be in?

Alright, that’s a bit of a lie. I wrote three pages about two people talking after such shenanigans took place, and twenty-five or so about one of the most dreaded vampires in existence kind of falling for a boy he finds in the dungeons. I’m struggling to keep it as a friendship, but I’m not sure Cian will let me. He’s been very forceful with how the story is going so far. In fact, he’s one of the most stubborn characters I’ve ever had the trouble of talking to. So much so is that I’m reluctant to even take credit for what I just wrote, he basically dictated it all to me. Even with Konnor I have to drag the plot of them, but Cian gives it to me freely. I kind of wonder why, but after rereading what I just wrote about him, it’s not very often that he understands his own motives to do anything. I feel kind of sad that those thirty some-odd pages won’t get to see daylight, because if I fixed it properly, I could quite easily change that into a book. It was in 1968 though, so it might be a little difficult for me to understand a certain point I kind of glossed over in the thing I just wrote.

Anyway, I move onward. I haven’t written much that hasn’t involved vampires lately, and that doesn’t help you, who knows very little about my Nightlife series I felt kind of sad about that, too. In all my books, I’m always overwhelmed at all the crap I have to work at, to research, to figure out, but in Nightlife most of the important things are figured out, so the rest is easy. I love how it turned out, and how if someone points to a name on the vampire family tree, it’s very likely I can tell you the circumstances of how they died, who they were and how they interact in the vampire world. Certain lines I can explain quite well, while others are still a mystery to me. There are still plenty of blank spots on that list, and it will have easily over 1000 names when I’m done. I also enjoy how the characters talk to me much easier in that series. Like, for instance, the boy that Cian falls for’s name is Aaron, and the reason he was captured is because he went into a vampire club intending to slaughter them all. The reason, I found, he wanted to do that was because a family member had been slaughtered by a vampire. But I was at a loss for a little while, because he didn’t seem like the type to get angry at just that. It needed to be huge. So I thought about it some more, and it seemed only natural that his brother was an addict, and that brother got turned and killed another brother. That’s why Aaron was pissed. I went to go look for him on the family tree, or find a place for him, and there was Brigitte, a girl from 1963 who falls in love with a side character from Konnor’s story, who was turned because a friend of hers introduced her to Ramses who took a liking to her. It seemed only natural that that friend was Aaron’s brother. It fit perfectly, because one of the other girls that Ramses turned had a nice gap in those that she turned that fit him in nicely. and made it so that this story had a nice relevancy to the other stories in Nightlife, so, if I chose, I could easily find an excuse to stick it in there.

To make an already long story shorter, it’s getting very fun, because my characters are becoming more and more real, and it helped me figure out that the only way that I, personally, am able to develop characters is to write their backstories, from beginning to end, and see what it reveals. Because one of my favorite things to do is to figure out how the vampires on my family tree were turned, this is a very nice and easy way for me to make that world real.

Lily and I asked each other which of our books we would go into, given the opportunity. I told her that it was easily Nightlife, because of what I know about the characters. I would go straight to Stalking Shadow, the NYC club, and just start talking to them. I know so much about them that I could probably get away with a lot of things, and almost certainly get turned. And, that, I think, would be the most fun out of everything, don’t you think?