World in the Satin Bag

Book Reviews, World in the Satin Bag

TGIFF

/

What exactly is TGIFF (a.k.a. tiggiff)? It stands for Thank God It’s Finally Friday. The general consensus among my multiple personalities is that Friday is the best day of the week. Why? It’s the first day of my weekend (I get 3 days off, four 10’s…) and it means that I don’t have work for two days. It’s in the best position because it’s the first day I get to sleep in, and it’s just an all around happy day. I figure with this post, as I prepare to post the first chapter to The World in the Satin Bag, I can do a little book review of something I read recently and do a little talking about my writing in general. So here goes. Eon by Greg BearIf you haven’t read this book and you like hard scifi, then you should read this. It was originally printed in 1986 by Tor and has been reprinted a few times now. I found it at Walmart and bought it sort of on impulse. I’ve never read Bear’s works before, nor heard much about him other than the few times I have seen his name. After reading the back, something I rarely ever do, I had to give it a shot.This book is by far one of my favorite books of all time. It revolves around a couple of characters set in a slightly futuristic Earth (we’re talking only slightly more advanced than where we are at now, but not so much so that it’s too fantastical). This giant asteroid swings in and sets up orbit around Earth, on purpose mind you. It actually slows down and sets up orbit. Anyway, this is in an Earth where the Cold War hasn’t yet ended (and when this bookwas written the Berlin Wall hadn’t been torn down yet, so it makes sense). Inside the Stone they find humanesque cities and mankind begins exploring it, well certain people do because most of the info is kept pretty secret on purpose. So, basically it starts there with the research and there is a big plot twist that comes and such.I can’t ruin how the book goes. I just can’t. All I can say is they find out that the Stone is from an alternate future and it parallels the events happening on Earth only it shows what happens in their future. Does that make sense? The explorers basically are reading about a future that has not happened yet on their Earth but something that had happened on the Earth where the stone is from.The book tells you a lot more about what is going on and how all that is possible and some other amazing aspects that you can’t miss. Seriously, give this one a thought. It’s a great book. Alright, so writing has been interesting. I have some stuff up on Critique Circle, this great website that gives critiques obviously. I was also reading some previously written things and really enjoying them. Some of my stuff is a lot more complicated than what I am writing for this project, and rightly so as I write a lot of scifi shorts and such. This is more of a longer work obviously and since it is fantasy based it won’t be as complicated.Anyway, I think this is going to work really great for me. I think :).

World in the Satin Bag

Another Week…

/

Well I’ve successfully had two great weekends this year: one was FanimeCon 2006 in San Jose, and the other was the 9th Annual Upscale Reptiles Show & Sale (a.k.a the Sacramento Reptile Show). Now it’s basically a count down to whatever else is coming up next year. I am totally doing Fanime again and I don’t know if I will do the Sac show again. I love going, but it depends on what I am doing next year. I think I might go to the Annaheim show instead when I get my snake. Anyway, so I find that during the week things really really suck. I have no time to write because I work 10 hours, I go to class for 3 hours, and then I take care of my pretty little family of reptiles. After that I’m in bed at 11 and up at 5 again, if I’m lucky anyway. So I don’t get a chance to write until maybe Friday.However, that first chapter is going up this weekend period. No doubts. I’m going to edit and post. Plain and simple. My new crested gecko is so cool. He’s so scared though :(. It’s understandable. He spent hours in a plastic container before being put in a whole new home where he’s completely unfamiliar with everything, and then to top it off he’s got some crazy giant man poking at him. I love him though. I named him Tim! It’s a cute name :). Hopefully he will calm down and be handleable in the next few weeks or so. He feels so weird! Think something soft and smooth but with sticky hands! It’s so cool when he touches your skin with the sticky pads and walks on it. Cresties jump too and have prehensile tails that can hand off of stuff. They are bizarre creatures. Anywho, so writing is going well. I will at least try to start chapter two this weekend after I edit chapter one. This weekend is going to be a calm weekend. No big plans or anything. I’m tired and need my sleep :S. Plus my animals need complete and total devotion and Grandma needs some help. So I will keep things posted and maybe put some interesting material up :).

World in the Satin Bag

The Big Day (Writing and the Show)

/

Today has been a big day. Actually, the whole weekend has been a big, well, weekend. Shall we run through the list of things that have happened? I think so :P. Note: The current schedule I am holding for blogging right now (every day but Wed.) is not going to be my standard schedule. Likely I will do three blogs a week and every third week a new chapter (or every month entirely depending on what I can manage). So just take note of that to check back every other day in the future. 1. I finished Chapter One! It’s not going to be up, as I said yesterday, but I finished writing it. Next weekend I will edit the little thing and get it at least presentable to the world. Then I’ll post it that weekend. I was surprised that I finished it when I did. Sometimes I say “oh I will finish this at such and such time” and then I end up writing about it for a long long long time. I’ve actually hit a deadline. This is good news because I have proven to myself that I can actually succeed at hitting a deadline that I made for myself. Good news good news. So that will go up next weekend. 2. Got in a lovely argument with a friend. Well, it was more like a serious discussion than an argument, but it involved our friendship and the issues we’ve been having with it. Needless to say it was not ‘fun’, at least not in the same sense as going to an amusement park, but at least the issues have sort of been resolved. 3. I just realized how much homework and reading and note taking I still have to do for the weekend and it will all have to be done after my thing today (a.k.a. Saturday). I am taking the following classes this semester:a) Traditional Native American Artb) Concert Bandc) Spanish (the first class for it anyway)Note: This is actually a light load for me and there’s good reason. Everyone has a subject they aren’t very good at. Well, languages aren’t my forte, especially when they are ones I am not interested in. Nobody teaches Latin or Japanese anymore around here and it’s terrible.So I have about 45 pages left to read for TNAA, which involves highlighting and eventually writing down notes and printing them since this teacher allows us to use our notes for the tests. Then I have to prepare for a presentation for Spanish and the first exam on Thursday. In all honesty I think I will ace the first exam, but only because it’s really simple stuff and requires mostly some memorization. We don’t have to write paragraphs yet, because that crap is hard. I shoud know because I took Spanish once in High School and didn’t get a passing grade and I also took one college semester way back when that I had to drop out of because of medical reasons (a.k.a. Cancer and being stuck in a hospital for two weeks). The reading is probably going to kill me the most. The problem with Art History classes is that the reading tends to be rather dry. I took an Asian Art class from the same teacher a while back and the book was one of the most dry and boring things I’ve ever read. However, when we started getting into the stuff about Samurai and how they designed their swords, the number of stages and hammering it took to get them in the perfect shape, etc. It was all fascinating and amazing. Zen Buddhism was also fascinating, which by the way is not just meditating. There is a whole lot more to it. Anyway, so the reading will be dry basically. 4. The Sacramento Reptile Show & Sale: Well I got back today (well this post will be shown to be the day after so just assume this was ‘yesterday’) from the 9th Annual Upscale Reptiles Show and Sale in Sacramento. It was awesome! I got to hold a corn snake, a snake called a Cribo (which was HUGE), and a baby Reticulated Python (who was so docile and amazingly neat I couldn’t believe it). I had a Leopard Gecko on hold from Marcia at Golden Gate Geckos and ended up getting a second from her, both females. The one on hold was an adult Chocolate Tremper Albino Jungle, and the other that I picked out was a gorgeous Bold Stripe Jungle.And to top things off, I took the plunge I had been expecting to come for some time. I bought a Crested Gecko! His name is Tim. He’s so adhorable. He’s sort of this wood brown/orange color and it’s so hard to describe without pictures. Hopefully I’ll have some soon to show everyone. He was absolutely gorgeous and I couldn’t resist when I saw him. His little darling face and everything! Oh man he was cuuute.My Leo’s are cute too, it’s just this is a new type of gecko for me and I’ve grown a fascination with them over the last few months.So needless to say things went very well. I spent all the money that I had brought with me, which was expected I suppose. I also found an insect that I will actually want to keep cause it looks so cool. It’s called a Whiptail Scorpion. No, it isn’t a scorpion in the traditional sense, nor a spider. They are actually completely and utterly harmless: no stinger, venom, or anything of that nature. They just look evil and I think they are fascinating little creatures. There’s also a little insect that looks like a scrunched up scorpion but instead of a tail with a stinger they have this long stringer tail and apparently when they are threatened they secrete what is basically like vinegar. It’s very acidic but doesn’t hurt you or anything, in fact you could lick it and apparently it would taste similar

World in the Satin Bag

The World in the Satin Bag

/

Well I changed the name to the blog because Parvulus Mens Mentis Mundus, while fascinating, doesn’t quite fit into the scheme of what I’m doing here. That and I had a stroke of creative genius at work Wednesday about the name for this YA novel I’ll be writing: The World in the Satin Bag. That’s the name of this novel. Intriguing? Interesting? Does it spark your interest at all? It did for me. Cause right when I was thinking about what I needed to write in the first three chapters, this title came into my head. I think it’s pure genius, but that’s me. How is the writing coming? Well, to put it frankly, very well. I am hoping to finish the very rough first draft of the first chapter this weekend. Then next weekend I will edit and hopefully put it up, but that all depends on a few factors:a) I am satisfied with the edit.b) I haven’t blown my brain trying to edit.c) Something terrible wrong doesn’t happen in my life.and d) I don’t screw something up during editing and make the story all weird.But, if all goes well it will be up next weekend, probably on Sunday. Sunday is also the day I update my webcomic which you can view here! It’s sort of different but I like it. Really I only do it for myself and my friends, but I have a couple of other fans out there someplace. I don’t know where, but I get hits on that page, so obviously someone other than my friends reads my comic :P.Note: My webcomic is in no way an indicator of what my fiction writing is like, so don’t be misconstrued about that. I think the first chapter is only going to be a few pages or so. Right now I have about three printed pages written. A printed page is not a type page on your typical word processor, it’s actually, on average, double the lenght of a typical word processor page. Meaning, you double space something on Word and one double spaced page is roughly the size of a printed page depending entirely on what a publisher prints: font size, page size, etc. But typically your average paperback novel page is the same as a double spaced page in Word.Anyway, so I expect the first chapter will be only six or seven pages simply because it’s the attention grabber and I want to get right to the end of it quick so you’ll be going “holy crap, what happened”. I sort of already have an idea of what is going to happen in the next chapter, but hopefully I can weave that into an interesting chapter, which will likely be just as short. The third chapter is going to be the most interesting of the opening chapters I think though. I love leaving people in suspense 😛

World in the Satin Bag

Writing Through Irritation

/

I’m going to compile a little list of things that are really irritating when you are writing. I get really bothered by being unable to write when I’m in that writing mode due to factors out of my control. So, I decided to make a little list of those things that really irritate. This isn’t just the fault of those things, but also the product of my flashes of writing genius coming at the most horrible times when I can’t write. 1. Work: I hate when I get a sudden spark of creative genius and I’m at work, leaving me unable to write anything more than a tiny sentence that won’t help me later on because I will have forgotten whatever it was I was talking about. I’m one of the many writers who has to have a full time job, a job in which there is no conceivable way to begin writing while on the clock. 2. School: This is not quite as bad as being at work, but it is just as troublesome, depending on the class and how much attention I actually have to put into whatever is going on. Sometimes I can start jotting things down, other times I am furiously taking notes and don’t even have time to write a quick note to myself. 3. Important Phone Calls: How many times have you been writing amazing stuff, on and on, page after page, and suddenly get a phone call that you can’t avoid? I hate when this happens. Yes, I can ignore the call, but when it comes to calls dealing with bills or whatever else is bothering my life at any particular moment, phone calls become rather difficult to avoid. And with me, when I’ve lost concentration in my writing, I’ve lost my creative burst for the whole day. 4. Being Interrupted: I find it rather annoying whenever I am interrupted by a member of my family or someone else when I’m right in the middle of writing. It breaks my concentration. The same thing goes for when I’m doing homework. Then whatever it was that I was doing is lost for hours or even the whole day. 5. In the Car: Have you ever been in the car and suddenly get a stroke of genius and can’t write it down because you’re on the highway and can’t stop? Annoying isn’t it? And then you try to remember what it was later so you can write it down and it’s gone… 6. Brain on the Fritz: This happens to me from time to time where my brain will be churning out awesome words, and then suddenly it just stops. It’s as if my brain is running Windows XP and randomly had to reboot, losing all those lovely images and ideas just as would happen if you had a Word document open and the computer died before you could save it. Gone to the abyss and if you are lucky your mind autosaved the stuff somewhere in the dark recesses of your subconscious and you are able to retrieve it. But that’s if you’re lucky… 7. The Internet: The Internet is one of those fascinating products that is both useful and distracting. The problem with the Internet too is that while you would think you could just set it down and not worry about it, you often find yourself using the Internet to feed your writing. At least that is the case for me. With writing fantasy and scifi, I find that I constantly go to the Internet to look up certain terms, research concepts that might already have been started in our world today, or even to spark and idea in my head. What runs along with that is all the email checking, random searches that have nothing to do with my writing, and all those other things that have a tendency to stop you from doing anything productive. 8. Music: I am one of those people that can’t write when there is music running, even if it is classical. I love music, don’t get me wrong, and I sometimes can write when it is playing, but for the most part I find it distracts me from doing much of anything, especially if it is music with words. I don’t know how anyone can write while their CD of Greenday is blaring in the background. How do you concentrate on the writing when you are singing the words outloud or in your head? When it comes to classical or orchestrated music I find myself humming along, but sometimes the music will really help my mind get moving. But only sometimes… 9. TV: This use to be one of the things that distracted me the most next to the Internet. Luckily for me I don’t watch it much anymore because, in all honesty, I think commercials are the most terrible inventions since Hitler invented the Concentration Camps. I hate commercials with every fiber of my being. That isn’t just exclusive to TV either. Radio commercials are just as retarded, annoying, and downright bad for society. Don’t get me wrong, there are some commercials that I actually enjoy. In particular are the Geico commercials (most of them except for any with the new gecko voice because I don’t like that accent on my gecko…). Regardless, in the days when I actually watched TV I found myself always distracted by it and if there was another factor that distracted me beforehand I always reverted to the TV or the Internet to occupy my mind. I do watch things on tape and DVD, just not on actual TV. Alright well I think that is a good enough list for now. I might come up with new reasons and add them when I can think of them. If anyone pops by leave me a comment if you have anything else that you think is distracting or irritating. Now in other news, it’s 8:09 AM and my new leopard

World in the Satin Bag

Story Beginnings and Story Ends

/

What exactly is it about writing beginnings that is so difficult for me? I’ve always found that when trying to write anything that I intend to be longer than a short story, the beginning paragraphs become a barrier that I can’t seem to pass. I wrote three different beginnings for this new story that will eventually become the blog novel this site is meant for, and only on that third try did I get something that started to go the direction I wanted. The first started out way too much like a short story. Yes, a novel should open and grab your attention, but the difference with short stories and novels is that a novel has a little more time to grab you than a short does. The second attempt ended up being way too annoying for me. It started sort of setting up a scene but in such a childish way that I didn’t like it. I think I was thinking way to Harry Potter for it and it just didn’t work. The third, though, clicked I think. It’s not perfect, and I don’t expect it to be on a first draft, but I liked how it opened and displayed in a small short paragraph this very memorable scene. The first paragraph doesn’t have the character yet, but it’s not finished. I have maybe 4 sentences in that first paragraph and right after this scene is set I will introduce the main character. It’s really going to be an exciting story. I got a few ideas from stuff I saw on TV over the weekend on Law and Order and a blurb of Lifetime (which is a terrible channel. Notice that Lifetime is TV for women, yet the women are always being killed, beaten, raped, etc. on there). Now to what I find to be EVEN harder: endings. For short stories it is always a battle for me to find an appropriate ending. I’ve got a few stories that I’ve written that really clicked for me in the ending and I was actually happy with, and then I have a whole bunch that I was disappointed in how I ended them (some of which I reworked and moved over into that happy section). Novels are notoriously difficult for me. I’ve yet to actually finish a novel. I’ve made a few attempts and can easily reach that one hundred page mark, but I’ve yet to get to the end. So endings have me a little apprehensive about the whole thing. I will write this story, and I will finish it, but I am always afraid of what will turn out in the story as it develops and how the story will end. So with my thursday coming up fast, the weekend dwelling in on me, and my writing set on its way I end this post. I am going to write a fun list of stuff in my next post on Thursday about the irritating things that happen when you are trying to write. Should be fun. Adios!

Scroll to Top