What I’m Going to Be Reading 2012 January 28, 2012
Posted by Laura in Thoughts.Tags: 2012, above, cinder, dan wells, insurgent, leah bobet, marissa meyer, partials, veronica roth, what I'm reading
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I’m looking forward to a lot of things this year.
The Hunger Games movie. I may attend dressed as Effie Trinket. It’s mostly a question of whether I can procure a pink wig.
Completing the first draft of my novel. May 2012, people! That’s the goal, crazy though it may be.
And books. Lots and lots of books.
Insurgent
by Veronica Roth
Sequel to Divergent that I loved last year. Tris was supposed to be celebrating the day she officially joined her chosen faction, but a war is brewing. I can’t wait to see where Roth takes the story. Tris is one of my favorite heroines, right there next to Katniss Everdeen.
Cinder
by Marissa Meyer
Book One in the Lunar Chronicles. The heroine, Cinder, is a cyborg. That was enough for me, but if you need more, it’s described as a sci-fi take on Cinderella.
Partials
by Dan Wells
A sci-fi dystopian story. If you like Battlestar Galactica, the story will seem familiar. Man has created biologically-based robot super-soldiers to fight wars. Then a deadly virus started killing everyone.
Above
by Leah Bobet
This isn’t my typical fare. I’m not an urban fantasy type of girl. But this book looks really cool. Matthew lives in Safe, a secret underground refuge for freaks with animal body parts or special powers like seeing ghosts. When someone threatens to destroy their haven, Matthew must find a way to protect those he loves.
If you know of something coming out this year that I didn’t mention, please let me know about it!
Subconscious themes January 26, 2012
Posted by Laura in Writing, Thoughts, Research.Tags: subconscious themes, sleep deprivation, insomnia
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One of the peculiar problems about living on Mars is the extra 39 minutes in each day. If you ignore the complications with timekeeping and synchronizing with Earth-time, the big question becomes “How would this affect human sleeping patterns?” It’s likely most of us would gradually get used to the longer day, like shift-work. What little I remember of research studies on circadian rhythm seemed to indicate your body would slowly adjust to a slightly different sleep cycle. But there are bound to be people who wouldn’t handle it well for various reasons.
This problem is a background plot line in my novel. As a new mom, you can imagine I’m sleep-deprived, so even though this theme was in the novel long before I was even pregnant, it struck me as amusing in a read-through this week.
Then I realized this is a recurring theme in all of my stories.
In the novel I was working on in college, the heroine researched the effect of sleep deficits on various cognitive tasks. She downed buckets of espresso in the first chapter, and one scene centered around her falling asleep at her lab desk.
In the science-fantasy thriller I still want to finish, the heroine rarely sleeps, and when she does, she wakes up exhausted. Her sleep is fitful and full of nightmares.
In the serial killer novel I shelved a few years ago, the heroine is a nurse working night-shift.
I don’t know what this says about me. Perhaps I should go take a nap.
New Years Post: What I Read January 1, 2012
Posted by Laura in Thoughts.Tags: across the universe, beth revis, Book review, Cameron Stracher, carrie ryan, divergent, favorite books of 2011, Favorites, Paolo Bacigalupi, ship breaker, The Dark and Hollow Places, The Water Wars, veronica roth, what I'm reading
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I’ve done a lot of reading over the last year. I read over my lunch breaks at work. I read in between contractions (yes, really. It kept my mind off of the pain.) before we left for the hospital. I read during maternity leave while my son napped. I read on my breaks at work for a few months until I got to stay home full time. Now that I’m home, reading happens during my son’s naps (if he naps) or after he’s in bed for the night.
I should also mention I’m one of those freaks of nature who reads really fast. That’s how I’ve been able to read so many books while caring for an infant. I might go back and review a few of these tomes, but for now I’ll just list and summarize my favorites.
My 5 Favorite Books I Read in 2011:
5. The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan- Book 3 of a dystopian fiction series. There are zombies. Trust me: you’ll like Carrie Ryan even if you don’t like zombies.
4. The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher- Dystopian fiction where the world has run out of water, and the main character meets a boy who seems to have plenty. Then the boy gets kidnapped. Imaginative, fun, and a good quick read.
3. Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi- More dystopian fiction (considering how much is out there, are you really surprised?) where the world has flooded. A boy breaking down beached ships for scrap finds a young woman in the wreck of a luxury yacht. Then he discovers someone is trying to kill her. This is Bacigalupi’s first YA novel, and I want to read more.
2. Across the Universe by Beth Revis- A space opera set on a generation ship. A girl in cryogenic stasis is nearly killed after being woken 50 years too early, and together with the young captain-in-training, she must figure out who would want to murder her. This book recommendation comes with a warning: there is some sexual content in the book, specifically an attempted rape. It was an important plot point and not graphic enough for me to quit reading, but it definitely made me cringe.
1. Divergent by Veronica Roth- I love Veronica Roth. I love the way she writes, and I love Tris, the heroine she created in Divergent. Yet another dystopian offering, the world is divided into factions that value a specific virtue above all others. The story starts just before Tris must choose her own faction, and she is caught between her family and her own desires.
All this reading gave me a better sense of what was right and wrong with my own novel, and I hope to finally complete that darn first draft this spring. Hopefully my son will cooperate by actually sleeping through the night!
Happy New Year! Welcome, 2012!
Clearly, I died. November 17, 2011
Posted by Laura in Thoughts, Writing.2 comments
Or was in a coma. Or developed complete amnesia and didn’t realize I had a blog. Any one of those would work. That’s what they do on soap operas.
“She died!”
“No, Damien misidentified the body because the corpse wore her favorite shade of lipstick. She was just hit on the head by a unusually large acorn squash during produce judging at the county fair and fell into a coma.”
“And when she woke up, she’d lost her memory and took a job as a dog food taster named Brunhilde until she saw Damien carrying an extra large case of Cesar Beef Burgundy in Petco and her former life gushed back like the slobber from the mouth of Damien’s teacup chihuahua when she saw the aforementioned case of canine cuisine.”
Clearly I need to enter the Bulwer Lytton contest.
I just had a baby. He’s cute and cuddly and loads of trouble. I recently transitioned to being a stay-at-home mom. It is fabulous and just as much fun as I hoped it would be.
I still don’t intend to spend a lot of time blogging, partially because of the aforementioned baby (who is racing toward toddlerhood at a frightening pace), but I do want to keep my two or three followers updated on my novel progress.
Do not expect posts about or pictures of my son. I am not a mommy blogger. I’m actually of the opinion that a child shouldn’t have his life splashed on the internet for all to see. I feel the same way about children on reality shows. At best it is awkward and confusing. At worst it is exploitation and a great way to keep therapists in business. Sorry to disappoint. He’s cute, he’s funny, but he’s mine. I’m not sharing unless you’re friends with me on facebook (and that’s not even a guarantee).
Anyway, I’m not dead. I hope this brings joy to your heart.
This blog is on life-support August 5, 2010
Posted by Laura in Writing.3 comments
And there is a good reason. I have to choose.
Write a blog
-or-
Write my book.
I’m choosing the book.
If I’m going to achieve anything, I can’t afford distraction. I can’t write a blog and a book and work full time.
I only promise to tell you when the first draft is complete. Until then, expect cobwebs to collect on this blog.
