How Is It Already October?

Hello friends,

It feels like it's been ages. I've been at my new job nearly a month now, and I had nearly forgotten about keeping up with this blog. I think that writing it regularly will be a bit of a tall order nowadays. All of my creative writing energy has been funneled into writing two blog posts a week for SparkPress, and the topics are basically what I wanted this blog to be in the first place, but never got around to writing.

Work is good. It's not exactly what I thought it would be, but I'm working a full-time job in the industry of my choice, and I feel good about what I'm doing. I'm learning a lot, and get to spend my days reading, writing, and editing (and doing some admin work). What more could I ask for? I should be wrapping up training in the coming weeks.

I'm considering doing NaNoWriMo. I've been saying I was going to do it "next year" for about 6 years now, and I feel like this is the first year that it's actually feasible. My only concern is that I don't have a story to tell right now. Most of the inspiration for what I write comes from my own life, and while it may seem to the casual observer that moving across the country for a new job sounds like the start of a grand adventure, the day-to-day has been mostly mundane. I work. I eat. I dance. I watch absurd amounts of Netflix and YouTube. I sleep. That's about it.

I still have time. If I actively look for it, maybe inspiration will come. I'll come up with a story I want to tell. If not... maybe next year?

Anyway, this was just a little life update. I'm trying not to completely abandon this blog but... we'll see.

Three Dark Crowns

Before we begin, I should probably disclose how I got this book. While I was not in any way paid to promote this book on my blog, I did receive it for free while on a job interview, and am now employed by the same company that does the PR for Three Dark Crowns.

Anyway, onto the good stuff.

When Crystal told me to go ahead and pick a book out of their backstock for the plane ride home, I was delighted to sift through the plethora of titles on their rolling shelves. After looking through them all, Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake caught my eye.

I had seen it on the shelves at Barnes & Noble, in my early days getting it mixed up with the Throne of Glass series and the Red Queen series. I had read the back, and always meant to read it... along with nearly 100 other titles in the store.

The premise is that in every generation, the queen gives birth to triplets, all girls. At a young age, they are separated and sent to live with those with the same gifts as them. At sixteen, they have a year to kill off the other two, using their gifts. The one who remains standing becomes queen. In this generation, something is not quite right. Mirabella, the elemental, has won the favor of the Temple, and they have backed her completely to be queen. Such favoritism has never been established before. Meanwhile, her sisters Katherine, the poisoner, and Arsinoe, the naturalist, are not as gifted as they let the world believe.

It was an impossibly fast read. Despite it's length at nearly 400 pages, I was finished reading long before my plane landed back in Chicago, and I had only started once I sat down at the airport. With alternating perspectives, it was impossible for the story to get slow, but the three protagonists and the people around them were so drastically different that it was easy to follow who was who, something I find many fantastical stories fail to do.

Once again, I found the last second plot twist predictable (I guessed it before I even got on the plane), but how it was revealed was still thrilling. By waiting until the absolute last page to reveal the twist, Blake set us up perfectly for a sequel. I know that I, personally, am chomping at the bit to find out how everything plays out, and will try to squeeze in time to read One Dark Throne, which comes out September 19th.

The Future of This Blog

So. As you may have seen in a previous blog post, I got a job at a publishing company. A year after finishing publishing school, after months of working in a bookstore and working for free for a magazine, I finally got myself a big-girl job.

But what does that mean for my blog?

The short answer: I don't know.

I'm going to be reading a lot for this job, but it'll be manuscripts and successive versions of them until they are ready to go. My first read will probably be over a year before they're published. I don't know how much I'll want to read for pleasure when so much of my job is reading. And will I even be able to talk about the books I'm working on? My guess is yes, but in a limited capacity until they're print-ready, and even then, probably only enough to give it hype.

Sure, I'll be learning way more about the publishing industry. But I'm going to also be writing blog posts about that for the company blog.

I want to keep up this blog, because I've really loved doing it. I've been trying to post every 6-8 days for the last few months, and it's been going really well. I'm just not sure how able I'll be to continue generating content at the same rate.

Hopefully, I'll just slow down. Maybe post something every 10-12 days. Maybe shift subjects a little (I mean, how many posts have I written about LIW? I could go back to that...) but I promise nothing.

Luck

The book began with Phillip's death.

It was not a dramatic death. He slipped away in the night, not making enough noise to rouse his wife, Nora, slumbering peacefully beside him.

But Nora's scream when she found him, dead, the next morning woke the whole house. Sophie and Beth soon joined Nora in the bedroom.

Luck by Joan Barfoot is the surprisingly fast-paced story of the three days after Phillip's death, and its effect on the lives of the three women he lived with.

As his wife, Nora was obviously grieving. She didn't really know what to do with herself, but she had a very clear idea of what she wanted to do with Phillip's remains. She wanted him cremated, and she wanted to turn his ashes into paint. She left the execution of her unusual request to Sophie.

Sophie, as a house manager of sorts, was in charge of funeral arrangements and calling everyone to inform them of Phillip's untimely demise. Unbeknownst but suspected by Nora, she was actually sleeping with Phillip as well, so she was going through her own grief but doing her best to hide it.

But Beth? Beth felt light. Phillip's death was certainly a surprise, and although she never harbored any ill-will towards him, she never quite liked him either. As Nora's model, she spent countless hours being adjusted and posing for Nora. This intimate relationship had given Beth a false sense of connection, even love, between herself and Nora. She was gleefully awaiting the day when they could be together.

I really enjoyed this book. It's not my typical read, but you know I love well-written female characters, and this book had three. Three complex, interesting, flawed women with fleshed out backstories. Three women who came together to live in this house for vastly different reasons. Three women whose worlds changed overnight. Honestly, I would have read a whole book on the backstory of each woman.

I like that the end of the book flashes forward to the 1 year anniversary of Phillip's death. Books that have a flash forward to wrap it up (outside of an epilogue) often seem like lazy storytelling, but this felt necessary. So much happened in the first three days, but those changes needed some time to breathe so each woman could individually grow from them. One year down the line, so much has changed, but they still feel so genuinely themselves.

I Got The Job

I got the job.

I got the job.

I did it!

I'm at a loss for words.

I found out mere hours after I posted my blog about going to Arizona. I'm on the couch with my mom, testing out the new TV.

I read the email out loud. My mom screams and hugs me.

As if on cue, my sister walks in from work. I tell her too.

I try to compose a coherent reply. Yes, September 5th sounds like a reasonable start date. (Why did I say that? That is so soon. There is so much to do. What. How.)

My mom starts crying that she's going to be all alone in this house. My sister films it and puts it on Snapchat.

I'm filled with excessive energy. My sister tells me I need to start packing NOW. (Who is she to talk? She leaves on the 20th and has barely started packing.)

I get a message from a guy I matched with on tinder when I was in Arizona, telling me not to worry, I'll get the job. I tell him he's right, I just got it.

My mom says we should tell my dad. My sister and I look at her like she's crazy. He's been dead for two years. She explains we should visit the bench we dedicated to him. She then concedes that his ashes are in the room. He heard.

She texts her friend. We call two of my aunts. I text Claire. I still have too much energy.

My mom and sister leave, off to their own plans for the night. I am left alone, not knowing what to do with myself.

Tash Hearts Tolstoy

So here's a funny story. Once upon a time, I started working at Barnes & Noble. I became friendly with some of my coworkers, and told them about my passion for LIW, and about Merry Maidens, the one I was working on at the moment. Several months later, one of those coworkers, Alaina, finds a new YA book, in which the protagonist is working a LIW and accidentally gets mildly internet famous. Since she'd only ever heard of something like that from me, she told me about it.

That was enough to pique my interest. No one even knows what LIW is, and now there's a book about it. Then I read the description. Tash, the protagonist, also happens to be a heteromantic asexual.

You read that right. Asexual representation. In teen fiction. Hell freaking yes.

That sealed the deal. Screw the massive To Be Read pile in my room, plus my long-ignored book list that I've been going through and adding to since high school. We have a loan program at B&N for employees that I had yet to take advantage of. Tash Hearts Tolstoy was my next read.

The best part is that I'm not even out to Alaina. She had no idea the effect this book would have on me. How much it would mean to me.

I have never felt so represented in literature. I felt like, for the first time, I saw someone like me in a book. I never really thought representation was an issue for me personally; as a white-ish middle-class cisgender straight-passing jewish girl, I could usually see someone who was kind-of like me. Before I figured out I was on the asexuality spectrum, I always wondered why characters in books always wanted to have sex. They'd be 15 or 16, in their first relationship, and they'd want to have sex already. And they would. And I always wished there was a character who didn't even have their first kiss until they were 18, 19, even older maybe. I felt like YA novels made it seem like sex and romance were the be-all-end-all, and most people had their first kiss at 13 and sex by 16.

God, I needed an asexual character in high school. I knew what asexuality was, in theory, but I couldn't separate sexual and romantic attraction. Because I had never experienced sexual attraction.

So anyways, this book is really important to me. Because even though I don't identify as completely asexual (demisexual is much closer to my experience), I found so much comfort in being in the mind of someone who gets it. Someone who never understood why people like porn or are motivated by sexual ads. Someone who likes the idea of snuggling up to someone and being kissed on the forehead more than sex. Even though I know I'm not alone in this, and even have a few friends on the spectrum, it's not something we talk about a lot. Seeing the world though someone else's eyes, when their view is remarkably similar to yours in a way that most peoples' just aren't, is incredibly validating.

It's not all sunshine and roses. Her identity is questioned multiple times; by friends who she did a poor job explaining it to, and by (SPOILER) a potential partner who thinks she's too young to know and doesn't think that sexual and romantic attraction are different. That one, in particular, was painful to read. It's one of my biggest fears. Who wants to date someone that isn't sexually attracted to them? At least I know that I could, theoretically, one day be attracted to them, but it's not guaranteed. And now that I've actually experienced sexual attraction, I don't know if I'd even want to be in a relationship without it.

Tangent: I actually tried outing myself to a guy before I went on a date with him, because I was starting to wonder if he was looking for more of a hookup. He didn't like break off the date or get mad or try to invalidate my identity or anything, but the date was SUPER awkward and platonic, when normally when we hung out he was flirty in a formal-ish kind of way. I think he might have been a little freaked out.

I've been very fortunate to not be exposed to much acephobia since I came out. There was one 'only plants are asexual' from a friend arguing that asexual is a stupid name for it (before I was out to him, but after I was out to his girlfriend), but a year later he came out as demisexual too. It's mostly been a lot of confusion because no one really gets it, but I think I've gotten pretty good at explaining it. Way better than Tash at the very least.

Anyway, I know this wasn't really about the book itself, but about why it's important to me. I know a lot of people who read this blog are LIW fans and creators, and thus I highly recommend it to you. A huge part of the book is Tash and her best friends Jack and Paul making a webseries, figuring out how to deal with the surge in fans, and excitement over being nominated for the Golden Tubas, which is an awards show and convention that seems like a step above the LIWAs but still a step below the Streamys. Ace or not, I think you'll still get a rush because they wrote a book about us!

Arizona

Sometimes, the best of opportunities come about in the strangest of ways.

A while back, my mother's friend, Pauline, mentioned that she had a friend who worked in publishing and gave me her contact info to set up an informational interview. When I gave her a call, she steamrolled me. She (without even seeing my resume or asking about my experience) told me that I was under-qualified and needed to do a lot of freelance work to be taken seriously. She introduced me to a website where I could get freelance work, although I never actually used it with everything else going on in my life.

But a few days after the informational interview, she sent me a link to the internship program at PR by the Book. Intrigued, I applied. Shortly thereafter, I was informed that they were not, in fact, hiring interns at this time, but would keep my resume on file for when they were.

So I moved on with my life and more or less forgot about it.

A few months later, I got an email. They were once again hiring interns and were wondering if I was still interested. Of course I was. I did a phone interview. It went well.

A few days later, I got an email. They had decided they did not actually need another intern, but really liked me. Was I interested in an internship at the magazine they also work for? Sure, why not?

That is how I came to work at Texas Lifestyle Magazine, but the story doesn't end there. I kept applying for jobs. ICM Partners asked me to fly out to NYC for an interview (you can read about that trip here). I decided to post on Facebook asking if people had recommendations of what I should see and do while I was there, since I ended up making a mini vacation out of it. Marika, the travel editor at TLM, saw my post and happened to be in NYC the same few days. So we met up for breakfast.

I told her about my book publishing aspirations and she offered to start sending me work for PR by the Book so I could get some more experience under my belt.

Our trips overlapped with Book Expo America, which she was attending. While there, she had meetings with many publishing professionals. One of which was Brooke, the publisher at SparkPoint Studios. Brooke mentioned that she needed someone new to help take on clients. She wasn't really sure what the role would be yet, but she knew she wanted someone passionate and driven and looking to get into book publishing in some capacity.

Since I had just told Marika about my ambitions in book publishing, I was top of mind. She mentioned that she knew someone who might make a good fit and offered to introduce us.

Dozens of emails, two months, and a Skype interview later, I found myself being flown out to Arizona to meet the team and do final interviews.

Everyone was so lovely. It's a small staff of loud, vibrant women who want to do great work. It reminded me a lot of my internship with the Les Turner ALS Foundation in that way. Most of them are also really young, especially on the publicity team. They all seem to be 22-26, which is something I wouldn't have even dreamed of.

If I were to join SparkPoint Studios, I would be on the publishing team, managing authors and their titles as they go through the entire publishing process. It's an amazing opportunity, because it would allow me to be involved in so many parts of the process, and give me direction as to what part of publishing I want to pursue.

I should be hearing back soon, so wish me luck!

Bonus: The office looks like it came straight from Pinterest.

Blackbird Fly

I am so stoked about the protagonist in Blackbird Fly.

Analyn "Apple" Yengko is a twelve-year-old Filipino girl. She's passionate about music (although her mom won't let her have a guitar), especially the Beatles.

I'm not so stoked about her situation. When she gets put on the Dog Log, a list of the ugliest girls in school, her friends drop her like a hot potato. People bark at her in the hallways, say her family eats dogs for dinner, and she is accused of theft.

It really feels like middle school. And like middle school, the only way Apple gets through it is with the help of some friends.

I enjoyed Blackbird Fly. I know it was meant for much younger readers, I'd guess around grades 3-7, but that just meant it was a really quick read. I read it on the train downtown and back, and finished it before I got off the train.

The book wasn't particularly groundbreaking, but I'm just so excited for a canonically Filipino protagonist. And she isn't a Mary Sue either. She has very specific interests and struggles and and has a unique but complicated relationship with her mother and makes poor choices that follows her own logic. So not everyone will see themselves reflected in Apple. They're not meant to. But chances are, most will be able to relate. They might see slivers of themselves in other characters. But it should be a window into someone else's world.

And if you're long past your middle school days, Blackbird Fly by Erin Estrada Kelly will remind you of why you're glad middle school is behind you.

Things You Get Asked Every Day At a Bookstore

So I've been working at a bookstore for like 9 months now, and there are some things people say every day:

Do you have a bathroom?

Yep. Back of the kids section.

Where's the Starbucks?

Right over there, with the big Cafe sign.

There's no one at customer service/the register/downstairs.

Yes there is. We're not allowed to stand behind the register/desk unless we're working on something back there, so chances are they're shelving a book or helping a customer. Give it 30 seconds. (But is there something I can help you with?)

Do you price match?

No.

But on your website it's only $__!

We literally can't even price match with our website. Yes, it's dumb. Sure, I'll definitely tell my manager that we should get that fixed. As if they don't get that complaint every day. We have no power to change anything.

Do I use the chip?

I literally just told you to use the chip if you have it. Please listen.

Can I check out here?

No. This is customer service. I can walk you to a register though. It's about 10 feet away.

I guess it's free then!

 Hahaha you're so funny! No cashier has ever gotten tired of that joke ever!


A million dollars. (or alternatively) The winning lottery numbers.

I asked you if there was anything else I could get you. From our store was implied.

Do you carry (insert nonsensical item here)?

...No, we don't carry diapers. Or t-shirts from your favorite sports team. Or whatever it is this time. This is a bookstore.

Young Widows Club

Once again, I should note that I read a proof copy of this book, not the final version.

I'm going to be honest, I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this book. A younger Red Hat Ladies book, perhaps? A group of young (which I would have probably defined as 20s to early 30s) widows finding solace in one another, friendship, etc., and being able to move on with their lives with the bonds of friendship. Something like that, probably.

The protagonist is 17. She is a widow at 17.

She dropped out of school to follow her musician boyfriend who already graduated, got married, and moved into a house in his parents' backyard when one day, his heart just... stopped.

6 months later, she gets caught trespassing. The court mandates that she return to school and attend a Young Widows Club, which Tamsen, our protagonist, quickly realizes is a bit of a misnomer. The members aren't "young," at least by her standards. They're young to be widowed. She quickly dubs it the Mostly Middle-Aged Widows Club.

There is only one man in the group, and he's the next youngest member. Colin, who's in his 20s, quickly judges Tamsen as putting on a show and not properly grieving, and he is not shy about letting her know. An altercation during their anger-themed grief group leaves Colin with a bloodied nose, and afterwords they being communicating better. While they both work on coming to terms with their partner's deaths, they also begin to see each other romantically.

The relationship is tentative and believable. They are both going through so much, and keep pushing each other away. They both still love their dead spouse, and feel guilt about the budding relationship. They push each other to build new lives, to find a direction. Ultimately, they are good for each other.

Of course, my favorite part of the book is Tamsen's growth. The Young Widows Club and Colin are a big part of that, but so is her childhood best friend, Lula. Lula is still hurt about being ditched as soon as Tamsen and Noah, her now-deceased husband, started dating. Lula shows Tamsen what real friendship looks like, how to embrace yourself, and how to keep a life balance when you're in a relationship.

One of Tamsen's teachers also has a huge hand in helping her figure out what is next for her. She finds Tam's talent, and gives her an opportunity. Tamsen must choose to pursue it or not herself.

While Tamsen's situation is vastly different from my own, there is a lot to relate to, no matter who you are. The loss of a loved one. Feeling directionless. Being afraid of one's own emotions. Friendship. Family- the one you're born with and the one you find along the way.

I'm interested to read more of Alexandra Coutts's work. Her previous title, Tumble & Fall, is also set in Martha's Vineyard, referred to as "the island" in Young Widows Club. The setting really becomes a part of the story in Young Widows Club. The setting influences the characters and the plot in ways that another setting couldn't. I would love to see how the same setting could influence a whole new set of characters.

Job Searching in a Digital Age

Look. We all know that looking for a job sucks. So-called experts say that looking for a job is a full-time job. Except no one is paying you, you don't have anyone else's deadlines to meet, and you're working wherever there's wifi. It's easy to lose motivation.

And I know I have it pretty easy. I'm living at home right now, and my mom isn't charging me rent (yet). I don't have to foot the grocery bill, and she still loves to go shopping by herself and come back with clothes for me. So I don't have many expenses. Gas for the car. Any shopping I do myself. Food if I go out- but I like to cook, so that's pretty rare. I'm not in desperate need of money. And I am working part-time. So that at least gives me a reason to get out of my pjs most days. And gives me a little spending money.

But that isn't the point. Adults in my life who have been in the same job for the last 10+ years keep telling me to "pound the pavement" and just call up companies I want to work for to ask if they're hiring. They don't seem to understand that's not how it works.

You can find out if they're hiring with a google search. Calling them doesn't show interest anymore, it shows that either A. you're technologically inept or B. you don't follow instructions, because most job posts these days say "No phone calls please."

And there's also the fact that a simple google search can pull up all sorts of information about you. That "funny" picture you took in college that you didn't change the privacy settings on when Facebook changed its policies? They can see that. The embarrassing video of you in a middle school production your friend's mom put up years ago? They can see that. Every tweet that you didn't bother to spell check or read back after you typed it? They can see that.

I don't think I have any horrible pictures on Facebook or Instagram, and I don't embarrass easily. But the twitter thing? Oh. That scares me.

Two of my minors in college were professional writing and social media marketing. For professional writing, I learned the ins and outs of grammar. In social media marketing, I learned about the damaging effects of a misspelled tweet or ungrammatical post. I've tried to be better about this recently; I do still every once in a while hit the send tweet button before I catch the mistake, then delete it and re-post it correctly.

It also doesn't help that over the last few years, I've tweeted from 10 twitter accounts. Six of them I shared with my best friend Claire as a part of the transmedia experience for the show we co-created, All Or Nothing. Two of them were for clubs at school, and when I passed them down to the next publicist, they were all but abandoned. The remaining accounts are the one for the magazine I work for, and my personal twitter.

On one hand, I would hope that they would only look at my personal twitter, as it's the only one I'm the sole author of. It's been maintained consistently, and it's the longest running of the accounts. But I'm also much more careful with the other accounts- they're for a brand, not just me talking about my life. I read them over multiple times, often reading them aloud to someone near me to make sure it sounds good and isn't crossing any lines. For my twitter, I'll write it, read it over once for mistakes, and send. Who cares? No one reads my twitter anyways.

Even though I more carefully craft my posts on the other twitter accounts, my co-owners are not always so careful. I remember when I went off to DPI last summer, I told Claire I probably wouldn't have time to do social media stuff for All Or Nothing, so she was solely in charge. It was probably the worst time for me to leave too, as I left a week after the trailer dropped, a week and a half before the show started airing, and I was gone for a month. So I left all of the last-minute pre-show hype AND the first few weeks of promoting to her. I remember getting so frustrated when I went on twitter and saw misspelled tweets, tweets not tagging people who we quote, etc.

I don't want the causal nature of my own twitter, or the mistakes of others on our shared twitters, to reflect poorly on me. Even writing a blog seems like a risk. I should probably proof it more carefully than I do. There is probably an error or two in quite a few blog posts, especially the old ones that I wrote in college. I usually didn't even proofread those because we weren't being graded on technical stuff. It was about the consistency of doing it, the quality of writing, and the comments we left on each other's blogs.

Having an online presence is a risk. But you can't not have one either. Especially if you want to do something under the marketing umbrella, which I do. They want to see what you do. But also, I'm not a popular person. My photos don't get hundreds of likes. Not because they're bad photos- but because I am both not popular on my own and not employing marketing strategies to get more likes. Social media is fun. Unless used as a measurement for marketing, I don't see the value of likes- they do not validate my existence. But I worry employers may not see it that way. How can she market a brand when she can't even market herself?

Go Set A Watchman

I really wasn't sure if I was going to read Go Set A Watchman. I certainly procrastinated on it long enough. I kept up-to-date on everything surrounding its publication. Was Harper Lee of sound mind when she signed for it to be released? Is publishing the book morally acceptable? Would it make a good companion to To Kill A Mockingbird?

Now that all the dust has long been settled on the controversy (and I was given a free copy of the book, so I didn't have to feel like I was rewarding the publishers for possibly exploiting an elderly woman not long before she died), I decided it was time to pick it up.

I was... surprised.

In it, Scout is all grown up and realizing that Atticus wasn't the god-like figure she always made him out to be. He had faults. In fact, he wasn't the anti-racism warrior that Scout saw him as during the trial in TKAM. He was just a really good lawyer who believed his client.

I am amazed that some editor somewhere read GSAW and was able to pinpoint that Scout's childhood would be a better story. To be fair, the memories of childhood were some of the best bits in GSAW. I especially liked the one when they pretended they were visiting preachers. Those memories were so vividly described.

But TKAM ended up being about the trial, which I believe to be the pinnacle of Scout's Atticus-worship. It was almost as if the two books were meant to come out as a set. One to build up this childlike idealism and then one to destroy its foundation.

I don't know how I feel about it. I've spoken to many who felt that GSAW ruined Atticus, who was a childhood hero for them. That was part of my fear in reading it. I never worshiped Atticus like others did, but I did find him to be a good example of doing what is right, no matter who opposes you, something I always strive to do.

But I think that ruining Atticus was kind of the point of GSAW. Not when she first wrote it, as it was the original novel; the larger themes are about questioning your gods, those you look to for moral guidance. Atticus had to be ruined for Scout in the book for her to grow. But as we all grew up reading TKAM, seeing Atticus through Scout's eyes, he was shattered for us as well.

And I think that's the genius of Harper Lee. And whoever that editor was.

Drunk Literature

So if you spend time on the internet, chances are you have heard of a little show called Drunk History. Basically it's this show when people get absolutely wasted and try to explain history. For some reason, my best friend Claire and I decided to make our own version of the show last December.

We did Drunk Literature instead of History, since we're both avid readers. As you know, I'm working at a bookstore while trying to get a full-time job in the book publishing industry. Claire is a certified English teacher. So yeah, you could say we like books.

Our first season (aka all the videos we filmed in one night before Claire threw up on herself; know your limits, kids), which you can watch below, consisted of the following titles:

• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
• Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
• The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• The Giver by Lois Lowry
• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Now that Claire has returned from Salt Lake City, (and then again from Greece,) we're talking about doing another season. We'll be a little safer about it this time; shots are only for if you're multiple drinks behind the other person. The problem is that we don't always read the same books, especially when it comes to the classics.

Last season we went into my basement library and just pulled books off the shelves that we thought we could talk about. We want to plan this one a little bit more. Thus, I made a list of classic literature that I have read that we have yet to discuss. I defined "classic" here by looking at the selection on the $5 classics table at a local Barnes & Noble and by what books had Sparknotes versions available. Thus, my list is non-exhaustive and includes some titles that some (or even most) would argue are not "classics." Nonetheless, these are the titles I put forth as potentially for season 2:

• Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
• A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
• Night by Elie Wiesel
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• The Odyssey by Homer

Of course, there is no way we could get through all of these; some Claire hasn't read (like Moby Dick, which I actually read twice before I even met her, which is weird) and some (*cough*Hunger Games*cough*) she vetoed.


We ended up filming Season 2 last night*. Many of the titles were on the list, but we also came up with a few more. Nevertheless, we will probably continue to use this list for future seasons.


*All of the footage, we discovered, went missing when my laptop died. We re-shot an abridged version in half an hour, so S2 will be kind of weird.

Merry Maidens

What a cute logo!

Since I've been talking a lot about LIW on this blog, I thought it was high time I talked about the LIW I was involved in, Merry Maidens.

It's a modernized gender-bent adaption of Robin Hood. It was created by Anya Steiner, the same mind behind Northbound, an adaption of Northanger Abbey that I really liked. When Anya posted on tumblr that she had moved into the Chicago area and was looking for volunteers to help her with the show, I immediately sent her an email. I was so excited to be a part of this project.

#LadyCrew

That was in September. Soon, I met Anya (top right) and we talked scripts and our mutual love of the genre. She sent me a draft to look at. It wasn't long before I got to meet her other recruits, Jenna (bottom right) and Sarah (center). Sarah was a stage director looking to learn about film and webseries. I think the best way to describe Jenna is that she comes from fandom. She always seemed to be working on something for a convention.

Then casting happened.

While I was disappointed I couldn't be physically present at casting (long story), I was so excited to be involved. The first video audition I saw was Sissy Anne Quaranta's (below, left) audition for Robin. It was absolutely nothing like what I had imagined Robin being like-- it was a hundred times better.

Do you ship them yet?

I next watched her callback with Evey Reidy (right). A couple seconds in, I had to stop it. Was that-? No, it couldn't be. Maybe? After watching the rest of the video, I told Anya that I liked their chemistry, and asked if I should know Evey from somewhere. But of course. She was Nancy in Jules & Monty, based on Romeo & Juliet, another show that I adored.

After that, the audition videos became a bit of a blur. Some of the choices were obvious, others not so much.

I missed the table read and the first couple days of shooting. While I was happy to go on vacation, I had really wanted to be there and meet everyone. I shouldn't have worried. The filming process took longer than expected, so I had plenty of time to get to know the cast. It wasn't that we weren't filming everything that we planned on in a day. With a couple exceptions, we remained remarkably on schedule. It was that we had to work around peoples schedules so we only filmed a couple episodes a day, and we only usually filmed once a week, and there were a couple episodes Anya wasn't happy with so we re-shot, and some episodes that had to be filmed on multiple days, and a few episodes that Anya wrote between shoots and had to somehow schedule in, and the fact that we didn't start filming until January so we had to wait until it was warmish (read: not freezing) to film our outdoor scenes.

My Merry Maidens Family.

When we wrapped filming in early April, I didn't know what to do with myself. It had been such a big part of my life for so long. I didn't want to lose the new friends I had made. We had a premiere party at Justin's (left, in the mask) place before Merry Maidens aired. It was cool to see them all, but of course, it is really hard to get all of us in the same place at once. The only time it happened was for the last day of filming.

The show had been airing for a couple weeks now, and it is so fun to watch people react over twitter. I love seeing the hilarious things Marissa (center, back) and Cat (center, in the pirate's hat) caption the videos with when they share them on Facebook, and I love still feeling connected to the Merry Maidens family.

The Hawkweed Prophecy

I'm really loving being in this groove of actually reading books on a regular basis. I don't know how long it's going to be before I post this, because I know I have some more timely blog posts that I'll want to put up, but for context, about a week went by between reading The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett and reading The Hawkweed Prophecy, Irena Brignull's debut novel.

I should note that I read the ARC, not the official book, which came out in September.

So it's this magical switched-at-birth story, where one of the mothers, Charlock, is witch, and one, Melanie, is not. Due to a prophecy that foretold that either Charlock or her sister Raven would bear a daughter who would one day be queen, Raven switched the children at the moment of their birth, ensuring that her daughter would be queen.

The two daughters, Poppy (born a witch, raised by "chaffs," which is the coven's word for muggles) and Ember (born a "chaff," raised by witches) both grow up feeling out of place in their respective worlds. Weird things always seem to happen around Poppy, and Ember can't even muster the smallest bit of magic. This causes strain in both their families.

When Poppy and her father move north, Poppy and Ember form an unlikely friendship. But, of course, there has to be some more drama, so both girls fall for the same guy. Leo.

I quite enjoyed this book. While I felt that the romantic subplot was unnecessary and the dramatic reveal at the end predictable, I understand that this is a teen novel and that is what you get when you keep reading YA; lots of predictable plot twists (because you already know how this genre works) and unnecessary romantic subplots (because apparently that's something teens care about).

My favorite part of the book was the friendship between Poppy and Ember. I am always here for awesome girls loving and supporting each other. I feel like female friendships and sisterhood is an element missing from a lot of mainstream media. Which is probably why I like webseries so much.

It read like a movie. Very visual, and a fast read. Which shouldn't be surprising, as Brignull is an acclaimed screenwriter, according to her bio on the back of my copy. Overall, would recommend if you want a little bit of YA fantastical escapism with lots of awesome female characters.

Although, just once, I'd like to see a switched-at-birth story that supports the nurture argument of nature vs. nurture, at least partially. Gimme a "chaff" raised witch who can't do spells for shit, but can follow a potion recipe perfectly. Gimme a witch raised "chaff" who can't figure out how to control her powers, or who has trouble casting spells without lessons, because she didn't grow up watching those around her doing it.

New York City

A photo of NYC taken while on the Staten Island Ferry

As you may know, most of the publishing industry is located in NYC. I have been planning to move there ever since I decided upon this career path, despite having never visited. Until September, my mother had never visited either, and was convinced I would hate it- city life and crowded streets and all that.

In September, my mom took her first trip there, and when she came home, she admitted that maybe she was wrong, maybe I would like it.

A photo of some of my friends and I during our time at DPI.

At the end of May, I was offered a job interview at an agency. HR did not want to do a phone or Skype pre-screen or initial interview; they wanted me to come in. So I did. I took off with a couple day's notice and spent four amazing days in NYC.

Unfortunately, it happened to be the week of BEA, so none of the contacts or friends I had made during DPI were available to meet up or do informational interviews. So the trip became more of one for pleasure than for business, which I fully took advantage of.

We somehow ended up 3rd row center for the 2nd act.

I got to see three Broadway shows (A Bronx Tale, School of Rock, and Book of Mormon), the taping of Live with Kelly and Ryan, the Fifth Harmony concert for Good Morning America, and dozens of landmarks. My boss at TLM also happened to be in town, so she took me out to breakfast before my interview.

I also got to see Anna, who was my best friend from ages 2-12. I had completely forgotten she moved to the area for med school, and was so happy to hear from her once she caught wind I was in the city.

I think the interview went well. I felt like a strong candidate, and should be hearing back soon about going back for a second interview.

____________________________________________________________
Thoughts from later:

One of the many treasures of Central Park.

I did not get the job. I didn't even get the second interview. But I'm still so glad I went. New York isn't this magical place to me anymore. It's real. I loved being there- despite the stress of my phone issues, which I'm now realizing I didn't even mention.

While I am extremely disappointed that the job didn't work out, I feel renewed in my determination to move to NYC. I can do this.

The Books I Never Read

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I went to a really liberal high school, which emphasized reading books by women and people of color over old dead white guys. While I really liked this focus, it meant that a lot of the "classics" got left out.

So here is a non-exhaustive list of the books I never read for school... and have still yet to pick up:

• Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* by Mark Twain
• Emma by Jane Austen
• The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• The majority of Shakespeare's works**
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

* There is a small chance I actually read this one. I can't remember if I read Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, but I think it was Sawyer.
** Especially Hamlet, which many classes at my high school read. Exceptions being Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

LBD5

In one of my earliest posts, I explained how the LIW genre came to be, citing the roots in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Well, it's been 5 years since LBD aired. More than, actually. There was this big hype a few months back about a big LBD5 event, where there was going to be a live re-watch, complete with social media and bonus content. Although, what bonus content could there be left after all of the extras that were on the DVD?

Tangent: I still can't believe people actually bought the DVD when the entire show is available for free on YouTube. My best friend, Claire, was among the ones who did, so I did get to see the bonus features and whatnot. I know people wanted to support the show and make it so Pemberly Digital (that's the production company; it's Darcy's in-world, but they kind of just ran with it) could make more stuff, but why not buy something you can't get for free like one of the awesome posters or t-shirts or signed pages of the script.

Back to what I was trying to say. Claire (and I'm sure, fans far and wide) believe that this bonus content will be the culmination of the show with the Lizzie Bennet Wedding. We know there's a script, and that gave them an entire year to film and edit. It's feasible. I, for one, would love to get a Lizzie Bennet Wedding. But I'm not getting my hopes up.

So I was expecting the LBD5 celebration to start in March or early April at the latest. But when it hit mid-May and nothing had happened, I got sick of waiting, and I re-watched the entire series by myself. I took a few days to do it; Lizzie's videos alone run upwards of 6 hours, and then when you add on Lydia's and Maria's and Gigi's... it gets extensive. I did skip the Better Living videos from Collins & Collins. They never really advanced the plot or developed the characters, so I deemed them unnecessary.

It's cool to remember where the roots of the genre came from. Tropes of the genre found their start here: no one ever locking their doors and/or people always barging in, questioning the morals of putting something online, justifying the existence of the videos, multiple perspectives, the media being a part of the story, race- and gender-bending characters, oversharing, etc.

I just think, as pioneers of the genre, if Pemberly Digital were to do something like a Lizzie Bennet Wedding, it would invite others to do something similar down the line. The story doesn't have to be over just because the book ended. They did something small at the 1 year anniversary of the show's end- a mini story over twitter, plus 2 Q&A videos.

Not many have followed this trend. The only one I can think of is Twelfth Grade (or Whatever), based on Twelfth Night, had a video where Viola and Liv got together several months later. Several have tried to do sequel series, following a character or two into another story, as Pemberly Digital followed Gigi in Welcome to Sanditon. Some did this really well; The Better Strangers, which follows As You Like It, followed Rose, Jill, and Paulie, who had previously been in A Document of Madness,
based on Hamlet. To be honest, for me, this one sets the new standard. This went way better that even Pemberly Digital's attempt.

Some did not do this well. Lovely Little Losers, which followed the story of Love Labour's Lost, followed Ben, Balthazar, Peter/Pedro, and Meg from Nothing Much to Do, based on Much Ado About Nothing. Where did they go wrong? Perhaps it was the choice of plays. Love Labour's Lost doesn't have much plot to it. Maybe it was that the characters in Love Labour's Lost are drastically different than those at the end of NMTD. Forcing them into this plot undid all the growth they made in the first show. Maybe it was the absurd number of episodes of fan service of Balthazar and Peter/Pedro sitting in a bath. Long story short, the show was not what we hoped for.

To be fair, most of the creators and lead characters are much younger than those in LBD. Lizzie was a 26-year old grad student. Rose and Jill are college sophomores, Liv and Viola were still in high school. At 26, you're much more likely to marry the person you're dating now, 6 years down the road than if you were, say, 16 or 17.

Perhaps this will lead to more shows with older characters cropping up. Most shows tend to put the characters as students; this may be following the trend set by LBD or just be a reflection of the youth of the creators. Many shows are created by high school and college students and recent grads.

The two LIWs that I remember being outside of that student mindset are The Autobiography of Jane Eyre, based on Jane Eyre, and the Cate Morland Chronicles, based on Northanger Abbey. Both of the leads were recent grads in their first job after leaving school.

I no longer know where I was going with this. Anyway, the day after I finished my binge-watch of LBD, they announced that the LBD5 celebration would begin June 5. Only time will tell if I'll participate, but if you've never seen a LIW, LBD is a great one to start with, and there's no better way to watch than live.

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

I already wrote two posts that I could put up this week, but I read an actual book this week, so I thought that might be a little more relevant. I know. A post about a book? On my book blog? Shocking.

I was supposed to go dancing on Saturday night. There was this barnyard dance, but it was like an hour away, and I hadn't bought an advance ticket, and I wasn't sure if any of my friends were going... so instead, I decided to pick up a book. The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti. It was just published in January, and I managed to snag a proof copy from work, which was great because it looked super cute. Look at that cover! Adorable, young adult fluff.

The book wasn't exactly what I was expecting. There really no "lies" to uncover; just the lies Lizzie told to herself, making herself who she thought she was supposed to be, who everyone liked.

I really liked Hawthorne, the narrator. She had such a unique perspective on the world. At 17 she hadn't lost any of her childlike wonder. It was a refreshing and hilarious perspective to experience.

I think the most frustrating thing about the book for me was that Hawthorne was straight. She spent the whole book, and the years before it, obsessing over Lizzie Lovett. Wanting to be her best friend/kindred spirit, being jealous of her life, beauty, and charisma, and hating her. When Lizzie went missing, she spent hours obsessing daily, coming up with outrageous theories, getting Lizzie's old job, befriending her boyfriend.

When Hawthorne started questioning her feelings for Enzo, Lizzie's boyfriend, I was convinced that she was so in love with Lizzie that she wanted to experience being her, since she couldn't be with her. I was really hoping for some realization of that sort. Although, these types of books always try to set up the main character with someone, and none of the female characters would have been a good match with Hawthorne, and I could tell that the story arc was setting her up with Connor, her brother's friend, while she was all wrapped up in Enzo.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I sat down and read it in one sitting, something I haven't done in a really long time. It was an enjoyable, quick read, with three-dimensional characters and a fresh perspective.

Quarter-Life Crisis

So I'm not sure if I'm going to post this or not. If I do, chances are it will be a few days after the fact, when the light of day has brought some perspective.

I had a bit of a quarter-life crisis on my way home from work. I realized that my year is almost up.

I had almost forgotten that I had given myself a year. One year, upon graduation from DPI, to pursue my passion and try to get a job in publishing. Once the year was up, I'd look into a more practical application of my degree. Get a job in PR or something.

It's already May. I'm 9 months in. What have I done? Gotten a part-time job at a bookstore. Something I could have done in high school. And gotten an unpaid internship at a magazine that I disagree with the values of.

I'm unstimulated. I'm bored. I'm stuck.

I don't even feel like I've given it a proper go yet. I haven't flown out to NY, staying in an airb&b or at my uncle's or whatever. I was going to just go. Stay for a couple weeks or months and really look for a job. Go on informational interviews, be able to actually go for my real interviews.

But I didn't. It was self-sabotage. I'm a planner. I needed the security of a job before I uprooted my life. I was scared. I thought my mom needed me- she wasn't ready to empty nest yet.

And now I'm at a crossroads. My year is almost up. I've either got to fully commit and just go- or give up.

I'm not sure I can fully commit. My reasons are dumb. I'm still scared. I still need the security of a job. What if I quit my jobs, risk everything and try... and I'm just not good enough, and I have to come back home, tail between my legs, and start from scratch?

But I'm not ready to give up on my dreams either.

__________________________________________________

A note from a week and a half later, with perspective:

The next morning, I woke up and applied for a job at Medline. It wasn't what I wanted to do, but it allowed me to use some of the same skills and work in a corporate environment, which I much prefer to working at home or in retail. And for a while, it really seemed like I had a shot.

And then they offered it to someone before I got to do my 2nd interview.

The job market is so fickle, it doesn't matter if I pursue publishing or PR or something related- I've just got to keep applying.

5 Best and Worst Books I Read For School

I thought I'd do something a little different today. As someone who was in school most of my life, I had to read a lot of books for school. For simplicity's sake, I'm only including books from English classes in high school and college.

It should be noted that I went to a very liberal high school, where they put an emphasis on reading contemporary works by and/or about women and POC. They had this concept of windows and mirrors, where you read some things that provided a window into someone else's worldview, and some that you could see yourself in. This will probably skew my results, including titles that most schools wouldn't normally read on both lists.

The 5 WORST Books I Read For School
1. Ceremony by Leslie Marmo Silko. This is the only book I've ever read that I rooted for all the characters to die in a car crash to end the misery of reading it. Would have made sense too, since they spent the majority of the book driving drunk.
2. The Stranger by Albert Camus. This book is everything you hated about Catcher in the Rye, but worse, because the whiney brat is a grown-ass man. And what is up with white dudes and their fascination with prostitutes?
3. Utopia by Thomas More. Don't let the title fool you- it's not a novel about a dystopia disguised as a utopia. It's a novel-length description of More's vision of a utopia. Which, of course, is only utopian for white cishet males.
4. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury's a great writer, but this book was his stinker. To be honest, I never bothered finishing the damn thing. And considering I was the only one in my class to guess what happened on the last page correctly, I don't think anyone else did either.
5. The Odyssey by Homer. This epic is epically boring! So. Damn. Repetitive. We get it, dawn rose with her rose red fingers and you have a thing for braids! Meant to be heard, not read. Shouldn't have bothered writing it down.



The 5 BEST Books I Read For School
1. In The Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alverez. I thought this book was beautifully written, and the way it wove history and fiction together was amazing. I especially loved how Spanish was integrated into the text. I hardly speak a word, but even I could understand.
2. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Yes, the same guy that wrote The Kite Runner. The book was told through the perspectives of multiple women, who end up married to the same man. I enjoyed learning about another culture through the narrative.
3. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. This is another one where I got to learn about another culture while enjoying a good story. There was some disturbing imagery about foot binding, but that was really my only qualm with the text.
4. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. You had to know one of his works was going to show up somewhere. To be honest, my teacher let us vote on which of Shakespeare's works we were going to read. I wanted Taming of the Shrew, but Midsummer is good too.
5. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I don't really remember much about the book, save a scene where the Taylor decides that Turtle is hers now, and drives off. I do, however, remember liking it and it being short, a relief right after finishing The Odyssey.


I'm curious. Did you read any of these? If so, are they on the right list? What would be on yours?

Losing My Passion and Finding It Again

For someone who loves books, I don't read as much as I should. Or as much as I want to.

I always blamed school. Between classes and homework and extra curricular activities and weekend competitions and part-time jobs, there was almost no downtime left. So I only read on breaks. Winter break, summer, spring, didn't matter. If it was more than a couple days long, I'd pull out my never-ending to-read list, hit the library, and dive in. But as soon as school started up, reading for fun became obsolete once again.

Here's the thing. I graduated almost a year ago. And I have gone through these same phases without school as an excuse.

This last one has been particularly strange. See, I went on vacation in January. I hadn't been reading much, had been reading the same book for over a month- I only ever seemed to make time to read while on the train to and from job interviews. However, I brought that book and 3 extras for my week of vacation.

I finished the one I had been reading, The Heart of Henry Quantum, on the plane. Over the first few days, I read Spill Simmer Falter Wither. The last few days, I read Barkskins.

It's now May. I'm still reading Barkskins.

To be fair, it is over 700 pages, but if I really wanted to, I could read that in a day or two. As I took the plane back home, my motivation to read plummeted. Yes, I still read it on the train, but I went on significantly less interviews downtown in the following months. My reading all but ground to a stop.

But I wasn't going to give up. It was a matter of pride now.

I did read another book in February or March for my internship. The Champion's Game. It only took a couple hours. But then my focus went back to Barkskins, yet I did not read it ferociously.

It was only last week, when there was a particularly slow day at work, that I felt that passion and joy for reading come back to me. Someone left The Hate U Give at the register I was working at. I recognized the title, and was curious. I read the description. Definitely worth a read. Gave the first few pages a try.

The next thing I knew, I was 150 pages in and my shift was over.

The next day, I snagged a copy and brought it with me to the register, read the rest, and picked up another book.

While I still haven't finished Barkskins, I did read another hundred or so pages the other day (yes, while on the train) and am feeling a lot more of that old passion for books. Sometimes, it just takes a great read to bring that spark back.

I guess the moral of the story is it's OK to take a break from something. Try something new, look at it a different way. Find the joy again. Don't let yourself just burn out.

1 year

I can't believe it's been a year. I stopped posting on this blog weekly an entire year ago? How is that even possible?

I know I tried to re-start in September. I got... sidetracked. My wistful plans to move to NYC and just start working got put on hold when I took a part-time job at Barnes & Noble. I figured that I needed to be doing something to work towards my publishing goals aside from sitting on my bed applying for jobs all day. At least this way, I can show that I know how to sell a book, and I know the book store market.

It was only supposed to be temporary. Seasonal. They were looking for help for the holidays. October- January. That was it.

But I settled into it. I took a couple weeks of my job search to get acclimated. When I returned to it, I was more open to taking internships, paid or unpaid. At least if I didn't have to move. If I could continue living at home, working part-time, I could do an internship.

And that's how I ended up doing an internship at a magazine.

To be fair, I never technically applied for this role. I didn't want to work at a magazine. I don't like shopping, and magazines often seem to exist solely to promote consumerism.

No, I applied to be a publicity intern at PR by the Book. I thought it would be the perfect fit. I wanted to do publicity/PR/marketing for books. I obviously didn't have the experience necessary to be offered an assistant position (what is up with needing 2-4 years experience for an entry level position?), but I could do an internship.

They liked me. But they decided they didn't need another publicity intern. But many on staff also worked part-time at TLM. So they offered me the editorial internship there.

I took it, hoping that I'd prove myself and they'd offer me a full-time position at PR by the Book. I certainly have proved myself- I've been offered part-time work there and a move up to Editorial Assistant at TLM- but there doesn't seem to be any paid, full-time positions to be had.

I feel... stuck. Between the internship and B&N, I don't have much time to apply for jobs (especially since I spent my Saturdays on set of Merry Maidens for 3 months-- but that's a story for another post). I can't live at home forever. I need to move on.

So here we go. Blog re-start attempt 2. I'm even posting on a Thursday, just like old times. Because if I love books as much as I say I do, you better believe I have a book blog.