To My Kitty

Dear Kitty:

I do not like your house guests, kitty cat.
I do not.
I do not like them of the flying variety.
Nor of the crawling variety.
I do not like it when they land on my head.
Now I need a shower, yes I do.
I do not like it when they poop on my pillow.
Now I need to wash it, yes I do.
I do not care if you're stuck in the bathroom
while I get your guests to leave.
I do not.

Say, I do like it when your house guests return home.
Yes, I do.

Kitty, kitty when will you learn
I do not like your house guests anywhere?
Not in my living room.
Not in my dining room.
Not in my hallway.
Not in my kitchen.
I do not like them anywhere.

Perched on a box.
Flying above my head.
Stuck in my hair.
I do no like them anywhere.

Kitty, kitty
I do not care
How much you meow.
How much you beg,
Plead,
Yowl.
I will not let you out of the bathroom
Till your guest is safe at last.

Say, kitty cat
I do like it when your house guests
Can be caught.
Can go home.
Can be free.

***

Sorry, I read Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham to my two-year-old yesterday, so it's been stuck in my head.

It doesn't help that my kitty's had such a fondness for bringing in house guests lately. The most recent being a bat last night and another bird this morning.

This years totals include:
3 bats
6 birds - 4 nestlings, 1 fledgling, 1 adult
2 chipmunks
2 rabbits

I think these last two were brought in because the heat wave we were having finally broke. He brought in a chipmunk last Sunday morning. (Which made me forget to grab my friend's son's birthday present. That wasn't a big because we just got him his first d20 as a stand in gift.) Then we had such a high heat index with it being up in the 100s to 110s (I can't say for certain since I didn't pay that close attention) that our kitty lounged in the air conditioning with the rest of us. Last night was his first chance to get back outside.

I love my kitty.

I just wish he didn't have such a fondness for bringing in guests.

And I know at one point I told my husband it wouldn't be so bad if our kitty ate some of the animals he caught, but I think I've changed my stance on that too. Especially when we got back from the drive-in and had to mop our floor.

Of course in the middle of mopping the floor and trying not to throw up from the blood, I thought of my vampire novel where Ayako finds her first dead body in the lounge car. In the original draft I had it that she didn't throw up. After all, it's just a dead body, right? And since she was a biology student, she had her share of dead bodies she needed to dissect.

Then I was mopping up the blood.

This was after my husband told me not to look, that he would throw away the parts. All I needed to do was mop the floor.

And maybe it has something to do with the fact that it was once a cute bunny that now had it's entrails strewn about my dining room floor (at least the kitty ate in the right room and didn't take his dinner onto the carpet or hide it in the basement), but yeah, now I just need to think about all the little details of that night to conjure up that same reaction.

When looking at the body, I had Ayako think of it as a painting. And to an extent, it is a work of morbid art. But then, I was thinking, you know, if I can get this sick to my stomach over one little bunny, how is Ayako gonna react to a human? Yeah, about the only thing she has going for her is that she doesn't have to worry about cleaning up the mess.

So, yes kitty, thank you for giving me those experiences to make my writing more realistic.

Take a Trip Down Memory Lane

This is cross-posted from the Den of Shadows message board.

Going through old college papers, my husband found the first short story I wrote for my first creative writing class. The most surprising part is that, eight years later, I don't think it's that's bad.

It's also based on the first ever D&D game I played. So these last few days have been a trip down memory lane as I've been trying to collect all the stuff I had written about this character and getting it in one location. Like I'll find one of the many character sheets I had for her and go, wow, I never knew she had that. Or why was she obsessed with this black crystal ball? And the list goes on.

For a while now I've been thinking about turning her story into a novel. And I remember a lot of crazy stuff happening in the campaign, but looking over her character sheets and reading old story notes, character goals, and equipment lists, it's a lot more random than I remember. But, unlike a lot of other characters I created for role-playing games, this one actually underwent a character arc which I highlighted in the short story I wrote about her.

So it's been fun. But now I'm also just little obsessed with finding all the game notes, story notes, and character sheets for her. Which is kind of like an adventure unto itself when this box has some papers, that box has other papers, this notebook has some notes interspersed with math and biology notes, that notebook has a list of this one character's many alternate personas, each with their own goals and such, and that crate burried in the basement has multiple versions of her character sheet.

[Sometime later.]

I found more story notes, campaign notes, and character notes for the aforementioned obsession and it's like one giant puzzle, trying to piece everything together. It's also quite fun.

What I Like About YA

This post is cross-posted from the Romance Divas message board.

I like reading and writing YA. I think mostly it's because there wasn't a huge YA market when I was a YA so I didn't really get into reading them until I was in late high school/college. One of the reasons I like reading YA is because the pacing seems to be much faster. In high school I read a lot of historical romances and high fantasy and the pacing in those books started to seem really slow to me. I wanted to get to the "story" (or perhaps action is a better word) rather than slogging through pages of description and history. I know a lot of people really like that kind of stuff, but I just got really sick of it.

So when my friend lent me Christopher Pike's Last Vampire series (recently repackaged/retitled as Thirst), I couldn't put it down. It was the first vampire novel I read, probably the first YA novel I read, and I wanted more. Sometime in college I found Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' novels and have been a fan of hers ever since.

Occasionally, I like to read adult novels, but for a while I only liked reading about characters my age. One of the first adult novels I read outside of the historical romance Nd high fantasy I read in high school and the YA I started reading in college was Dime Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong. I was instantly hooked because the main character was 23, which happened to be how old I was at the time.

Now I'm not as picky about character age so much as my experiences while I was the main character's age. Like I can't get into most of the books about 30-something's who are still looking for love because I got married when I was 20. But I can relate to all the teen girls who are obsessing over their souk mates in YA fiction. There are times when I make exceptions, but mostly it'll be because I want to read about a certain type of character or I'm looking for books that are somewhat similar to my WIP. Also, most of the time a great character and a fast-paced plot will trump character age/experience. One example being the Queen Betsy series by MaryJanice Davidson.

I also like to write YA because I think that's the time where people go through the most changes in life. Especially at the age of 17 (which most of my characters happen to be), you're writing about someone who is practically an adult, wants to be an adult, but has none of the responsibilities of being an adult or even fully aware of what it means to be an adult. There's something about that dynamic that I'm drawn to as a reader and as a writer.

Reading as a Writer

This is cross-posted from the Absolute Write message board.

When I choose a book to read, I'll look for things like genre, type of main character (shapeshifter, spy, pirate, etc.), whether it's an author/series I've read before, and point of view.

While I'm reading a book for the first time, I hope to be engaged by the characters, their situation, and the world they inhabit that I don't notice little details. Afterwards though, I like to page through the book and/or think about what I read, sometimes even reread passages to get a feel for how the author handled things like chapter length, opening hook, major turning points, character backstory and description, whether each chapter ends with a hook or not, etc.. These are also the same things that can pull me out of a story while I'm reading it.

Some other things that can pull me out of a story are unbelievable character actions/reactions to a situation, especially when it contradicts with the character's backstory, too much and too closely repeating one or two details about the main character while not including other details about him/her, really short or really long chapters, especially when the really long chapters don't have any scene breaks, and when every chapter has to end with a hook.

Some of these things will make me not enjoy a book as much as I could have, while others will annoy me so much that it'll just take me a really long time to finish reading the book.

As a writer, I just try to incorporate the things I like into my fiction while avoiding the things I don't like. When I get stuck, or what to know how an author pulled off one of these techniques well, I try to analyze their work to see how they did it so I can try the same in my own writing. I think that's why it's important for authors to read non-fiction books about writing techniques and fiction books to see practical applications of that technique.

Happy Holidays

Well, it's December 1st already. I can barely believe it.

Pretty soon Christmas will be here, then the New Year, then my second baby will be born.

Just this last week my husband and I were wrapping Christmas presents and I was commenting how my belly wasn't so big the last time I was pregnant and wrapping presents, when my baby was due in April and not February. I needed my husband to help cut the wrapping paper just because my belly was so big I couldn't reach the other side, and even leaning over as far as I could, I could only reach about the middle of the paper.

Something about wrapping presents just reminded us how close we are to having our second baby. When I got really sick with morning sickness this past summer, it seemed like it would never end. Now I'm 29 weeks along. It's kind of exciting because my son was born at 37 1/2 weeks, so we'll see how close this one makes it to 40 weeks.

I didn't get much work done for NaNo this year. In fact, it was my worst year. But on the non-writing front, I made a lot of headway in cleaning my house. It's not perfect, but better than it's probably ever looked. Plus, my husband hung our stockings last night.

We also had Thanksgiving dinner for my husband's family at our place (which was the main reason to get all the cleaning done). Seeing all the tables and chairs crammed into the living room reminded me of holidays at my grandma's where there are so many people you can't see the floor. What can I say, I like the holidays. I'm just glad Thanksgiving's over and someone else is hosting Christmas.

Japanese Schools, Part 2

And here's the follow up.

I taught in Iwadeyama in Miyagi Prefecture, which is a pretty small farming community in north central Japan. So that had all the small town politics you could imagine.

I also taught in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which is comparable to many American cities. Not too small, but not too big either, like Tokyo or Osaka. Yamaguchi's on the southern tip of Honshu. And Yamaguchi city has a population of about 140,000, which is the smallest of all Prefectural capitals. It's also pretty close to Fukuoka (a major shopping center), Shimonoseki (which has an amazing fireworks display in August), and Hiroshima.

Another thing I wanted to mention was that nearly all schools require a school uniform. From The first week in October to the first week in June they wear their winter uniform, which is a long sleeve shirt or a jacket and skirt for girls and pants for boys. In June, they switch to their summer uniform which is a short sleeve shirt. There's also a lot of variations on uniforms, like a lot of different styles.

High school students tend to wear really short skirts too. Like when I taught in Miyagi, it was very fashionable for the high school girls to wear their skirt hiked up so high that it barely covered their butt (like it'd be maybe an inch below their shirt) and showed off the gym shorts they wore underneath. I saw at least three different color gym shorts, so my guess was a different color for each grade, but I didn't teach at that school, so I'm not sure.

Also, they typically don't have locker/changing rooms, and when they need to change into their gym uniform (which is the same for boys and girls), they usually just change in the classroom (boys and girls). The junior high school I taught at in Miyagi was kind of unique in that it had "locker rooms" for the students, a separate boys' and girls' one for each class. But, they weren't like the ones in America because if you looked out the window from the teachers' lounge you could see them. So the rule was just don't look out the window. But from an American standpoint, it seemed rather open and not at all private to me, but I would take that to having to change in hue classroom. But then, as you could probably guess from the fashionable high school uniforms, they typically wore at least their gym shorts under their regular school uniform.

Likewise, they rarely had lockers in the classrooms and didn't have any in the hallways, so most students would keep their book bag next to their desk with them. Which can be kind of annoying when you have thirty-some students crammed into a room that should only fit twenty or so. You just have to be careful not to trip over someone else's bag.

Another thing is that Japan doesn't have indoor heating, except in Hokaido. So the individual classrooms will have a space heater. So if you sit next to the heater in winter, you will be quite toasty. But if you sit on the opposite side of the room, then you'll be pretty cold. So some students, mainly girls because of their skirts, will take a blanket to school with them to cover their legs during the day.

And getting back to the school uniforms before I forget again. Not all schools require a uniform. My husband taught at a junior high school where they didn't require one, but most of the students chose to wear school uniforms anyway. Though instead of everyone wearing the same uniform, he said it looked like friends went shopping together to pick out matching uniforms. So there was a wide variety of school uniforms there, but groups of students tended to wear the same one. Except a couple students didn't wear a uniform at al.

And, since often times the uniforms are all the same, the only/main way girls can express themselves is by their hairstyle. So you can see a lot more elaborate hairstyles in Japan than you can see in the US. This might mostly be a junior high school thing though. But if you ever want to change your hairstyle, you can only do it over one of the breaks.

As far as I know, the breaks include Golden Week (a week long in May and corresponds with the Emperor's birthday), summer break (which I think is around July/August and lasts a month), and winter break (which is also a month long and is in December/January). Then there's a break at the end of the year, for about a month, that's in March. Their school year goes from the beginning of April to the beginning of March.

Also, I wanted to add that their breaks usually correspond with the end of a term. And at least for summer break they are usually given homework to do. But I'm not sure about winter break.

That's about all I can think of for now.

Japanese Schools, Part 1

So once again in response to topics over at the NaNo message boards, I have some more stuff that might be of interest here. If nothing else, I get to talk more about my experiences in Japan.

So this first post are my answers in response to another user's questions, which is why some of the info may seem a little disjointed.

I was never a student in Japan, but I taught ESL there for about a year, so hopefully I can help answer some questions.

I only taught Monday through Friday, but there were a lot of other activities that took place on Saturdays. Like Sports Day and Culture Festival.

I worked from 8 am to 4 pm. During that time, there were six classes. I think the first was around 8:20 am. There was lunch. And at the end of the day, all the students had to help clean their classroom. Then most students had an extracurricular activity that started around 3. At my school, busses left at 3 then would come back to pick up kids after their activities and leave at 4.

Also, students don't change classes, but the teachers do. So the kids will always have the same classroom and same classmates for the year. And they eat lunch in their classroom.

Elementary school is six years, or US equivalent of grades 1 to 6. Junior high school is three years, or US grades 7 to 9. And high school is three years, or US grades 10 to 12. Each grade starts at 1 for each school. So a junior in America would be a year 2 high school student in Japan. Usually there are more than one classes per grade, so they are usually called 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc. depending on how many students there are in each grade. Also, this class number is posted outside the classroom.

Because Japan is very homogenous, non-Japanes people tend to stick out. A lot. I don't know how it is for a foreign student to go there, but as a foreigner in general it can take a lot to get used to, especially if you're used to someplace with a lot of diversity, Like the US.

Foreigners, or at least Americans, are expected to be very outgoing, be loud, and have very animated features while talking. So, as a foreigner, if you say, "Ohaiyo gozaimasu," you're expected to say it loud enough that the entire room can hear you, even if a Japanese person could just say it in a normal voice or even quietly.

Vampire Questionnaire

This was originally posted over at the NaNo message board, but I thought it would be useful to post here as well.

This doesn't cover everything there is to know about my vampires, but it's a pretty good start.

1. Are your vampires "alive" or "dead?"

My vampires are very much dead. The world allows for "living vampires," but I haven't dealt with them yet.

2. Can your vampires eat or drink? How about sleep?

They can't eat or drink except blood. They don't need to sleep, but they need rest because their minds are still active and resting/sleeping allows their minds to process everything, same as it does for humans.

3. It's pretty standard that sunlight and vampires go hand in hand. Is sunlight fatal to your vampires? Does it just bother them? DO THEY SPARKLE IN IT?

Sunlight is not fatal to my vamps, it just weakens their vampire powers/abilities. Most newer camps tend to stay indoors during the day just because the sun bothers their eyes and because they're pretty weak. But the older and/or more powerful vampires don't have as much of an issues with the sun because they have enough extra vampire power to make the sun's effects not seem like a weakness.

4. More myths! Do your vampires have to be invited in to a private residence? Do they have shadows? How about reflections? Are they harmed by Christian objects like crosses or holy water?

They don't have to be invited in. They do have shadows and reflections. And they can be harmed by any religious symbol, Christian or otherwise, so long as the person wielding the religious symbol knows that the vampire is in fact a vampire, believes in vampires, and believes that holding out a religious symbol will actually protect him/her from the vampire. It's possible to kill a vampire with a religious symbol, just not that likely because most people don't have that high of a belief in all three categories for it to be effective.

5. Blood. All vampires need it. Do your vampires drink human blood or animal blood? Can they drink both?

Yes, vampires can drink both human and animal blood and survive. But their preferred blood source is that of other supernaturals (like shapeshifters, witches, etc.).

6. IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE...NO, IT'S A FLYING VAMPIRE! ...Can your vampires fly or levitate? Do they have any other "special" powers? Are the super fast? Super strong? Telekinetic?

Most newly created vampires are nothing more than ghouls, who only care about getting their next meal. They barely even have a human consciousness. If they survive long enough they can eventually become more vampire-like. I don't know what their abilities are like because I haven't really worked with them much, but they are faster and stronger than humans. Plus they're dead, so not much can hurt them.

My strongest vampire is stronger and faster than other vampires, can "melt" into her surroundings, and has the power of her Beast (which I don't really know what that is yet either). And these are while the sun's at it's brightest. She also has some other abilities that I have written down but can't think of at the moment.

7. Speaking of dhampirs, does your novel have any? Oh, and for those of you that don't know, dhampirs are half human, half vampire.

No. Even though they could potentially exist in the world.

8. Okay, I gotta know. Can your vampires reproduce? Are they fertile? Can they "mate" with humans?

No. With the exception of "living vampires," but then I don't think those are really vampires to begin with.

9. Hey, you're almost done! Anyway, what do your vampires look like? Any defining characteristics? Are they more Count Orlok than Lestat?

The main characteristic of my vampires is that they all have ruby/blood red eyes. Also, they have a severe allergy to wood, so they tend to avoid things like toothpicks, wooden chopsticks, stakes, and pretty much anything else that contains wood.

10. Yay, last question! How were your vampires made? Virus? Evil warlock? Can they bite people and turn them into vampires?

The original vampire was created by the Angel of Death. He figured since the other gods were creating their own supernaturals that he should be able to create his own. So the Angel of Death created the first vampire, who changed his wife into the second vampire. Then the first vampire got cocky and wanted a priestess for his mistress even though she was married and had kids. But he changed her into a vampire anyway. When she changed her children into vampires, because she didn't want to spend eternity without them, the first two vampires tried to kill her. She killed them instead. Now she's the most powerful vampire. And her kids are responsible for making all the other vampires, except for one (my MC).

In order to become a vampire, you have to die (usually quite violently too), and loose over half your blood in the process. This is from a vampire trying to feed on you and/or kill you. Then either that same vampire or another vampire has to give you enough of their blood to make up for the blood you just lost. Since this severly weakens the vampire who gives you their blood, most are against actually doing this. Yes, my vampires would rather just let you die than turn a dying human into a vampire themselves.

Back to Revisions

I'm like doing a posting marathon today or something, but these are just a couple things I wanted to add. And having a distracted toddler long enough to post some stuff isn't an everyday occurrence.

So here's another one cross-posted from the Den of Shadows message board.

I'm getting back to revising my sci fi/urban fantasy. It's going to be difficult starting out because I'm switching two scenes around. That doesn't seem all that hard, but then I have to make all the scenes in-between and around those two scenes flow together. Plus I need to delete a character (which makes him happy since he'll be alive to hopefully come back in another book), and I'm hoping to give his important scenes to one of the antagonists (and the guy I'm deleting was a semi-love interest).

In my head it all sounds like a really good idea and a way to make a much stronger opening and story in general. But then the outline I had for my first draft also sounded pretty good in my head. So we'll see what happens. And we'll see how much I can get done before November.

Additional comments.

I'm just excited to be working on this story again. I've been wishy-washy with it all summer and now that it's almost time for NaNo, I'm gonna see if I can get it done before then. Or at least get a significant way through this set of revisions.

But then I have a pretty good motivational treat this time around.

Mature Themes and Writing YA

These two posts are both cross-posted from the NaNoWriMo message board, with some addition comments.

The thread is about mature themes/topics in YA books and what readers can handle versus what writers can/should write. It's a long debate, especially with books like The Hunger Games trilogy where many readers, parents, and librarians were outraged at the violence of the trilogy, especially in Mocking Jay. I haven't read the books yet, but they're on my list. But then you have other books that have teen sex, drugs use, drinking, any number of things that some adults don't want/thinks teens to/should be exposed to.

Actually, I think the thread started as a rant, but as someone who writes YA, this interests me beyond the level of a rant.

So here's my first post.

Granted I'm no longer in the YA age range, but I still love reading and writing YA. I read YA a lot more now then when I was actually in high school just because the YA market has become it's own entry since then. Before I would have to look for books in the adult section and hoped they had younger characters or just deal with it.

But now YA has exploded as a market, and in some cases it's more popular than the adult market in the same genre. So it seems like a lot of authors are crossing over, meaning they're writing the same genre, but now for both markets.

The only problem I have is that it seems that some of these authors need a formula in order to write YA. Like the last book I read, it seemed like the author made a checklist of all these things that are in YA books, and therefore she needed to use them in her own writing.

Her philosophy seemed to be:
Every teen drinks, unless the parental units are around.
Teens do drugs, like pot and cocaine.
Every teen has sex.
If you can't have sex, you'll masturbate.
Even if the character's in a steady relationship, there still needs to be a love interest that's the new student at school.

That's all I can think of for now, but it just really annoyed me.

I think as an older person trying to write YA I'm more sensitive to some of the stuff that older YA writers feel like they have to include. Mainly because when I was in high school, not everyone was drinking or smoking or doing illegal drugs or even having sex. And sometimes I feel that older YA writers feel like they have to include these things otherwise they won't be true to the YA market, when instead it feels like they're writing stereotypes of teens.

And my second.

When I was in high school I didn't want to read about characters swearing, drinking, having sex, etc because I didn't do any of those things. So a lot of the fiction I wrote at the time was anti-swearing/drugs/sex and it seemed like I went out of my way to avoid those topics in my writing.

But now, ten years later, I've learned a lot about writing, creating characters, and life in general. Now I don't have a problem writing about some high schoolers going to a party and drinking. I don't try to write how evil acohol is, even though I don't drink myself and would prefer my son didn't drink until he's 21. At the same time, I don't write it that every character drinks, has sex, does drugs, etc. It's not who I am now and it wasn't who I was in high school, so I think it's important to show that not everyone does these things, but I think it's more important to be true to the character.

Just like some people experience more "mature themes" at a younger age, some characters can and should experience those same things at a younger age. But just because some teens drink, smoke, do drugs, and have sex, that doesn't mean all teens do or that all teens should in writing either.

Finally, some additional comments.

Do I think that writing YA makes me obligated to write about teen sex/smoking/drug use/drinking/swearing? No. Just because it seems likes it's becoming the norm to write "edgy" YA doesn't mean I need to. That's like saying just be use I write adult fiction about a character in a romantic relationship, I need to include explicit sex scenes. (But that's a topic for a later blog post.)

Some people mention (not necessarily on that thread, but this is just what I've picked up around the blogosphere) that if you include sex/drinking/swearing, etc. you should be obligated to educate your readers on it. Like at another message board I go to, someone said if your teens are having sex, they need to have "safe" sex (which was suggested to them by their agent/editor). I have nothing wrong with that, but birth control still isn't 100% effective. You can extrapolate this into saying if your characters drink and drive, they need to get into an accident or get pulled over by the cops or something.

But other people say that the only obligation you have to your readers is to tell them a good story. You don't need to preach to them about the horrors of teen sex/drugs/drinking or anything else--whether that's your view or not.

To me, telling a good story is being true to my characters. Some of them drink, others don't. Some of them have sex, others don't. Just because I think writing young adult should be true to the young adult experience. Not every teen drinks. Not every teen smokes. Not every teen has sex. So why should all of my teen characters drink, smoke, have sex, etc.?