Sherrie Miller Miller itibaren Seehof, Almanya
~Reprint from February 2007~ FONDLING YOUR MUSE by John Warner Writer’s Digest Books ISBN: 1582973482 ASIN: B0045EPDD6 2011 update: available on Amazon (not an e-book at this time) If the title does intrigue you to at least pick up John Warner’s bestselling tome on writing advice, then you are either: (1) sufficiently satisfied with your full-time job as a meter reader, saving your writing “hobby” for evenings in front of “Home Improvement” reruns; or (2) you are so completely and sickeningly content with not only your burgeoning writing career that you are impermeable to so-called “advice” from someone who doesn’t write in your chosen genre but also you must get enough action in the bedroom to resist any book that has the word “fondling” in its title. Before you sit down with Fondling Your Muse, turn off Tim the Tool-Man Taylor and move your stuffed animals off the couch so they avoid being showered with the grains of salt you will toss about wildly while tearing through the animated, hysterical diatribe. Warner, an award-winning editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies (and chum of a number of disgustingly accomplished young, impish writers) is side-splitting. Resist the temptation to read aloud passages to that disheveled, pierced teenager sitting next to you in the bus shelter. He can’t hear you, anyway—Incubus is screaming from the headphones of his iPod, rendering him devoid of understanding spoken English for at least another day. The self-effacing humorist misses no opportunity to make fun of writers, the pursuit of the elusive and most certainly idyllic “writer’s life,” or the dreamy chase of the advance money you will undoubtedly get for your first 120,000-word attempt at entering the Kingdom of Novelhood. Warner pulls no punches as he goads us across the punishing battlefield known as publishing. Muse covers the importance of MFAs and killer queries, overcoming writer’s block and writing hotter sex scenes. If it’s hard advice you seek, pay special attention to the “Motivation Moments”— that is, of course, after you dab your tears from that last giggle fit. Writers, for reasons as personal as our choice in lacy undergarments, spend millions of dollars annually on books that will dish up that one pearl of advice that will deliver our manuscripts into the anxious and grateful hands of parched editors desperate to quench their thirst on the genius of our double-spaced, properly formatted pages. Warner recognizes this and, the bastard, has capitalized on our insecurities. There’s a reason why his book (published by Writer’s Digest Books, a company that has made gazillions on this premise of writerly self-inferiority) has sold so well. He doesn’t have the Holy Grail enshrined in his swanky, professionally decorated home office, from which he can summon the Secrets of Success; he just happens to possess an uncanny ability to divine COMMON SENSE from the mayhem of the struggle for literary supremacy. You know what he’s saying — you know it like you know your own mother’s distinct Tova Borgnine-inspired scent. If you want to write a bestseller — if you want to get anything published, for that matter — you have to W-R-I-T-E. No more “Home Improvement.” Get rid of those stuffed animals (they’re draining your chakras and exacerbating your allergies, anyway). No more paychecks blown on writing advice books or book doctors who only take you away from what you KNOW you should be doing. If you’re looking to Fondling for bona fide advice on how to get published, hang onto your milk money. If you’re looking for edgy, no-holds-barred commentary on how seriously we scribish slaves tend to take ourselves, buy it, read it, read it a second time to satisfy your itch to scribble notes in the margin and use your new set of highlighters, and then support this goofball’s well-earned success by ordering copies for your writers’ group comrades from Amazon. Just don’t be surprised if Warner shows up on your porch on his knees, groveling to your Greatness and showering you with rose petals in gratitude for upping his Amazon rankings. (Trust me-—he’s watching.) Post script: Apologies for the italics. Something happened in the cut/paste from Word into this template, and I can't find it. No random HTML tags that I can find. Whatever. Content's still good, right? ~jsy
An electronic ARC was provided to me by HarperCollins Australia for an honest review. The Darkest Minds is about the outbreak of a mysterious disease called IAAN that killed a majority of America’s children whilst leaving the remainder with abilities that scared the government enough to put them in ‘rehabilitation’ camps, which are really nothing more than concentration camps. At the start, we are introduced to Ruby, a 16-year-old who’ve been sent to the camp, Thurmond, by her parents on her 10th birthday. While I found Ruby’s backstory of how she arrived at the camp intriguing, the storytelling was a little choppy as we were suddenly thrust into Ruby’s past without warning. Also, how exactly did this disease come about? These camps classify their occupants by colour according to their special abilities. I found myself quite lost throughout the majority of the book as I don’t think the abilities of each group were explained properly, you just had to read to understand what they did. I guess Bracken took a ‘show-don’t-tell’ approach, but this got confusing because there was so much being thrown at you at once. (But maybe it was just me, and she did explain it but it completely went over my head? In that case, then it’s my fault for being completely confused.) Ruby kept her head down throughout her time at Thurmond by pretending to be a Green (someone with intelligent mental capabilities) – but in fact, she is really an Orange (someone with the ability to control minds). While I found the pacing of the beginning to be quite slow, I enjoyed it because it was really fascinating learning about Thurmond and Ruby’s time there. The camp was horrifying. Adults (known as psi officers) walked around with rifles and abused children left and right. It was just horrible to read about Ruby’s time there, so props to Bracken for creating such a creepy environment encased in this horrendous atmosphere. I think what made up the majority of the book was the world-building and character development. Liam, Chubs and Suzume became characters that I loved, and even Ruby grew as a character. Seen as weak and vulnerable to everything at the start of the book, she became stronger and made hard decisions for the benefit of others by the conclusion. However, I found that the plot was sacrificed for world-building and character development. The beginning and ending was strong and exciting as things actually happened quickly. There was action, there was suspense and I went through those chapters so quick! But the middle fell so flat for me. Aside from a few chases/escapes from the the psi officers and skiptracers (bounty hunters), all that really happens is the characters getting to know each other. I found myself saying that certain scenes could definitely have been cut out/molded together with others to make the journey more exciting. At more than one point, I kept wondering where Bracken was actually taking this story. While I wanted to put the book down halfway through, I gave the story the benefit of the doubt as I saw so much potential in it. It was just not executed as flawlessly as I’d have liked. One advantage for this slow story building is that the romance didn’t feel forced. I love, love, LOVED it. You could obviously tell from the beginning who that love interest to Ruby would be, but the slow plot made the ‘getting-to-know-you’ phase all the much sweeter. I was definitely rooting for them – which is why the ending REALLY floored me. SO MUCH SO that I cried. I think what really killed me was finding the playlist Miss. Bracken has made for the book right after I finished reading and was still feeling so vulnerable and emotional. Because of this, the first song on the playlist almost put a dagger through my heart because it was just so perfect and fit the ending so brilliantly. I think it’s really a song that you need to have read the book to feel extremely emotional about. The rest of the playlist is just brilliant also, it just captures the essence of the novel completely. CLICK HERE FOR PLAYLIST! I really thought this book would be a standalone, I think it works well as one for such a thick book – so much so that I was really disappointed to find out that it’s meant to be a trilogy. As the majority of this book was spent on character development, it’s almost as if Bracken held back the plot developments in order to stretch out the story. While I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing as there are still so much left to be resolved, but it almost feels like I can pinpoint what would happen in the next two books. (view spoiler) There was also a lot of inconsistencies in the editing of the book. For example, ‘Rob’s’ name was used before he was even introduced. I think I really noticed that because it was just so abrupt. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m reading an electronic ARC, but I found myself stopped abruptly in the middle of sentences throughout the whole book because words were either missing or misused. This became a really frustrating because it felt so jarring to the overall reading experience. While I found many problems with this book, I did like it overall. I think Bracken has come up with a very interesting story that could perhaps have worked better as a standalone. The ending was heartbreaking as the characters were developed so well, but I wish it could have just been left off like that – almost as if to say life’s not perfect, deal with it. I will definitely be picking up the next book in the series as I’ve really become invested in these characters, I just hope there is more action now that the world is built and the characters are well-formed! - - - - For more reviews, visit thoughtsbyj!