I don’t try to sell things on my blog unless I actually love/ believe in the product. I’ve looked over the materials she’s developed and it seems like something I would have loved to receive as a kid!

Here’s a blurb from the Pick Your Path Books website about what she’s offering:

At Pick Your Path Books we customize original novels to feature a child’s name, family, and interests. All you do is fill out a form telling us about the child and his/her family, and you receive a book that is personalized for a specific person! In addition to the extensive customization, our books are written in a “pick your path style”, meaning that it is the child’s decisions throughout the story that determine the ending.

Each book is printed and bound just like the paperbacks you find in the store, with a glossy cover. You won’t be able to tell the difference.
Books have been written with children 8-12 years of age in mind.

I’ve taken a look at the first title offering, The Mayan Ruins. The writing is solid, the illustrations are great, and the physical quality of the book is equivalent to anything you could find at Borders or Barnes & Noble. On top of that, the kid will experience an adventure while learning about Mayan culture and architecture. Here’s what The Mayan Ruins is about:

One moment you’re on a plane to a theme park, the next you’re being kidnapped by two distinctly disreputable men. They want you to help them pillage some ancient Mayan ruins. Do you decide to help them? Or do you try to take the treasure for yourself?

This title is set mostly in the tropical locale of Belize. Cursed ruins, a tunnel into the past, and ghosts abound!

So it’s time to ask yourself; do you know a child interested in having a personalized adventure set in the Mayan ruins?

Check out the website for more information: www.PYPBooks.com.

In case I don’t get a chance to blog again in the next month, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

Bed by Joshua Hoffine

Check out more horror photography by Joshua Hoffine. His work is inspiring. Some of the scenes he’s shot, like the one above, make me want to write all the story that must have happened before and after the photos.

If you visit his site, be aware that some of his portfolio is very graphic.  It’s not called horror photography for nothing.

Happy Halloween!

I love oranges. I wrote an entire guest post about my love for oranges. Actually, I wrote two.

In those posts, I mention how I’ve purchased books based purely on the title containing the word “orange”.

For instance, I purchased Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit before realizing it was by one of my favorite authors, Jeannette Winterson. It turned out to be an excellent read.

My luck held out again this week. I picked up Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris. I couldn’t put it down. This is one of the best books I’ve read all year. It is sensual and dark historical fiction, full of betrayals and secrets, where oranges are used as weapons instead of food.

I didn’t recognize the author’s name when I picked up the book.  Joanne Harris is the same author who wrote Chocolat. Chocolat was turned into a movie starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp and happens to be one my all-time favorites (my husband’s too).

Just one of those weird connections that reaffirms my faith in the power of a ripe, sweet orange.

Some people have lucky numbers. I have a lucky fruit.

Posts will be short and sweet for the next few weeks. In the meantime, check out my new review of the post-apocalyptic novel, Plague Year, on the QuietEarth website.

Before I had the courage to call myself a writer I would feel guilty about reading. I thought I should have spent that time getting done something productive and not be ‘selfish’.

When I started calling myself a writer I realized it became a part of my job description to read as much as possible, especially novels that I enjoyed. I realized that I MUST make time for reading because reading will make me a better writer and good reading always makes me excited to write.

There’s a great phobia that solves any and all problems with finding time to read:

Abibliophobia -having the morbid fear of running out of reading material

Suggested Usage: “Jamie is such an abibliophobe that she NEVER leaves the house without a novel tucked into her purse – otherwise the world may end.”

Suggested Usage: “Jamie is such an abibliophobe she included the word in the ABOUT Jamie Thornton section of the blog.”

Allow me to count the ways in which I am an abibliophobe:

- I will choose a purse to take with me based on the size of the book I’m currently reading.

- The side slots in my car doors contain at least one novel.

- If I’m going on a roadtrip that number increases to at least five (and that’s five on top of what I’ve managed to pack in my purse and other bags).

- Some people can’t get away for a weekend without packing 10 pairs of shoes. I’ll decide to wear only the flip-flops on my feet in order to make room for another book in my bag.

- My To-Be-Read pile is four stacks at least three feet high.

- I’ve been known to sacrifice water bottle room in my hiking pack to make room for a novel I just might get the urge to read.

- I’ve been known to bring a book, or two (or three) to family dinners.

- Going to the movies? Need a book to read before the movie starts.

- Even if I was willing to purchase The Kindle, I would still carry around a backup novel just in case the batteries ran out, I cracked the screen, or someone set off an EMT.

- If I absolutely could not fit a novel in whatever purse I was taking, I still print out an article and fold it like crazy until it fits.

- If folding it like crazy still won’t make it fit, I’ve been known to stuff my husband’s pockets instead.

The above list is what I’ve managed to brainstorm in about five minutes. Thank goodness reading is now a part of my job description.

If you’re interested in feeding your own reading habit, check out my post on:

Do You Library? How to Read 291,000 Books Before You Die

Writers must battle the fear of the blank page, and then, the fear that no one will recognize the book is worthy to be published. I’m sure there are more fear roadblocks, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten in the publishing process so far

When I stop writing for more than a few days it’s not because of a lack of ideas, but because I’m spending too much time thinking about the business of writing and not actually writing (or reading). Then I read something like the post on Write To Done or the post on Crime Fiction Dossier to write a great book and I remember, “A writer is a person who writes.”

I love reading posts that inspire people to continue writing, especially when it includes quotes from one of my favorite authors. Check out Stephen King’s On Writing for more. It’s part autobiography and part lesson book for aspiring writers. It’s one of the best books on writing I’ve yet read, and I’m not just saying that because The Stand is in my top ten list.

Even though writing is a solitary endeavor, it helps to know other writers (published or unpublished) experience fears similar to my own. Not sure why that’s such a comfort. Maybe it’s a mix of ‘misery loves company’ and ‘I am not alone’ — two sides of the same coin?

Ever wonder what the earth might look like if vegetables took over the world? Carl Warner has:

So has Octavia Butler. She wrote an entire sf trilogy that involves spaceships, genetics, aliens trying to take over the world, and interesting ways of generating food (and people). She’s one of my favorite all-time authors. Her novel, Parable of the Sower, made it on my top ten favorite apocalyptic novels.

Cornification

I saw Warner’s artwork on io9.com and felt inspired to share this with all of you. Something about his inventiveness and attention to detail captures my imagination and makes me want to write stories set in strange worlds like the ones he’s created. As I was writing this post though, I realized that while amazing, Warner’s foodscapes are not as novel as I had first thought.

Something about the nightmare idea of food taking over the world just-makes-sense.

Don’t believe me? Check out Shawn Hendriks post on Enslaved by Corn. Or The Ominvore’s Dilemma, or, or… well, maybe Warner’s artwork isn’t meant to be political. I mean, it is an imaginary world of broccoli trees, milk waterfalls, and biscuit mountains, but still, remember what happened to those greedy kids in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Bad things. Bad, bad things.

Thanks goes to io9 for finding Carl Wagner’s collection of foodscapes. Can’t say I’d want a bite out of Warner’s broccoli tree, plus the biscuit mountain looks a little tough to chew, but check out Warner’s full gallery of foodscapes. I wouldn’t mind spending lunchtime in his Tuscan Market.

Oh, My! (Final Thought)

Warner’s art looks like what might happen if the Smurfs had a threesome with the Twilight Zone and Charlie & the Chocolate factory. Come to think of it, UNICEF already imagined what that threesome might look like:

Your Turn

So what do you think? The Vegetable Apocalypse: a disturbingly accurate prophecy of our not-to-distant future, or does it make you want to keep a bowl of ranch dressing handy?

Art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind by transmitting emotions and/or ideas.

The all important first draft (and maybe 2nd and 3rd drafts, too) is for myself and myself only, and then I want to share, I want to ‘transmit’ it to others. For right now, I believe the best way to accomplish that goal is to seek representation with a literary agent and sell my novel(s) to a publisher.

If you’d told me five years ago that I would be attempting to perfect the be-all-end-all sales letter (also known as query letter), I would have raised an eyebrow, thanked you for the information, and proceeded to wipe such an idea from my brain.

Now I know better.

Query Madness

The querying process seems so mountainous, so finicky, I want to shake my fist high in the air, laugh, and shout, “This will drive you MAAAAD!!”

When I am tempted into this fist shaking shout, I envision the Narcoleptic Argentinean in the movie Moulin Rouge! with his throaty MAAAAD! during the song El Tango De Roxanne (a remake of Roxanne by The Police).

I did not begin writing fiction with the idea in mind that I would need to be a saleswoman. In fact, I went into fiction with the idea that it would take me deeper into art and farther away from sales.

I don’t need to query a literary agent, I don’t need to sell my books to a publisher, but I would like to — and for money please. Not a lot of money, but enough money to someday make real the dream to write full-time without feeling guilty for making my family sacrifice things like, oh, electricity, hot water, fresh produce from the farmer’s market.

So I must put on my saleswoman’s hat and become skilled at writing pitch letters, because if not me, than who?

ALERT: Extended Simile

Querying a novel, or trying to sell any creative work is essentially selling your mind. A couple lines from El Tango De Roxanne:

Roxanne
You don’t have to wear that dress tonight
Roxanne
You don’t have to sell your body to the night

The Narcoleptic Argentinean begs Roxanne not to give in, but to hold herself to some higher ideal of love and chastity while going hungry and probably sleeping on the street. Art for art’s sake is a grand and noble idea, but it does not pay the bills or put food in my pound puppy’s bowl. Luckily, I do have a day job and do not count on my writing to bring in any income.

Yet.

Reality Bites, Now Move On

I do not hold my querying agony against literary agents, or even the publishing industry. I regularly lurk on many different agent blogs (and am very thankful for all the knowledge they’ve shared that has helped me be more savvy about the entire publishing industry).

I understand the reasons for form letter rejections, the passionate hatred some agents have of opening a query letter with a rhetorical question, how you can still land a great agent even with a rhetorical question in your query, why agents are looking for any reason to reject…

I understand this is how the game works. If I want to play the game I have to play by the rules.

How about you? How do you handle it? Comparisons encouraged. I’m always looking for new favorite lines to yell out when I become frustrated.

In my quest to write the best query letter possible I’ve found some great resources off and online. I’ll share them with you soon. In the meantime, check out my previous post where I talked about The Query as String Theory.

“Writer’s block is a phenomenon involving temporary loss of ability to begin or continue writing, usually due to lack of inspiration or creativity.”

There are writerly ways of overcoming the blank page, or you can Hack Your Way out of Writer’s Block.

But if you had only one sheet of paper, you could…

…Do Something Like This:

(Click images to enlarge)

or this…

or this

or this

Or this

Each image is made from a single sheet of paper and an amazing imagination (in this case, Peter Callesen’s).

For more beautiful single sheet art visit: A Single Sheet of Paper and Peter Callesen’s selected works.

Just Write

No matter how you try to overcome that blank page, keep in mind Steve Martin’s famous quote:

“I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.”

Now please excuse me. I’ve figured out how to fix my first novel and I need to find a pair of scissors.

That pretty much sums up my life for these past three weeks – and my excuses for not having posted.

I plan to get back on track with posting 2-3 times per week. In the meantime, you can check out the movie review I wrote for Spiral on the QuietEarth website.

QuietEarth

QuietEarth is a website “Dedicated to genre film and everything Post Apocalyptic.”  They post news and reviews of books, movies (including foreign), and more. I link to QuietEarth on my blogroll – they are just that cool.

Check out what they say about Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse. This is a short story collection that includes authors like Stephen King and Octavia Butler. I’m about a third of the way through and loving it!

io9

If you happen to be looking for another great science fiction resource, visit io9 – a website “strung out on science fiction”

I star a lot of their posts not only for content but for the incredible images they find. Some are so cool and inspiring – like this concept art from Hatch FX about the Gorgeous End of the World:

Some are just hilarious – like this one, about how Evolution Explains Why LOLCats Control Your Mind:

(Click on images to enlarge)