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mephistia

attempting obscurity

I mess around with writing, but deep down I'm pretty sure I'll never actually get published because I treat it like a hobby and not a passion -- I write when I have time, instead of making time to write.

 

When I read, I prefer YA sci-fi/ fantasy as my go-to fiction reads. I tend toward this genre because I read fiction as an escape from the daily drudge of life. YA sci/fi-fantasy usually has more upbeat/ hopeful endings, while adult fiction of any genre (except romance) tends to have more depressingly realistic endings. Sometimes I read romance novels, but I really prefer the type with plot/ character development between sex scenes, and I don't like having to hunt for them.

 

In non-fiction, I prefer history, biographies, psychology, gender studies, social/applied sciences, and law/ public policy.

Currently reading

Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It
Lise Eliot
White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race
Ian F. Haney López

The Demon's Lexicon

The Demon's Lexicon (The Demon's Lexicon Trilogy, #1) - Sarah Rees Brennan I thought this was a great read, for many reasons. The characters are well developed, the pacing was perfectly timed, and best of all, I did not see the ending. I thought I did, but then she hit me out of left field with a completely different twist than what I was expecting. First and foremost, I love Rees Brennan's writing style. I was originally introduced to her work through a fan-fiction community online. The first piece of her writing that I read, I didn't like. But as she continued to write and post in the fan-fiction community, her writing style matured and changed. Her later pieces of fan-fiction I adored -- in fact, by the time she stopped writing fan-fiction, she was the only writer in that particular form that I was still reading.Naturally, I was excited that she was being published in her own right, as I think she's a brilliant writer with a fantastic ability to convey humor, develop character and weave multiple plotlines together. The only thing I was worried about (since I'd only read her fan-fiction work) was whether or not she could pull off the same magic in an original work.Well, she did. This book is riveting, impossible to put down for any length of time. The fact that I (along with many other of her fans/followers online) was able to read about her journey towards publication, follow the links to her interviews that she so generously provided and (best of all, in my opinion) watch her grow and mature in her writing style made this work all the richer and more textured, but this is a work that will stand on its own. You do not need to be familiar with the author's journey, with her previous works or her parodies of literature and films to enjoy this book. Rees Brennan is an inspiration and an example to aspiring authors. Because of her online journal, interviews and helpful links, I've become more aware of what truly talented authors do to get published. All too often in authorial interviews, I've heard the answer, "The story just came to me and I wrote it down," in some variant. Reading Rees Brennan's blog and the various links she included helped me realize that while that is a part of it, there's so much more to getting published that first time than just a brilliant idea and a fevered spurt of writing.