January 5, 2010 -- 2:59 p.m.
My brother's home from law school for the next month so I've been spending all my time with him, which is why I haven't blogged anything, and won't until February.
It's good to take a break from the computer, anyway, sometimes I feel like I've been tethered to it for too long.
In news, I love-love-loved HUNGER GAMES. I just finished Suzanne Collins' Y.A. book and I can honestly say it's one of the best things I've ever read. I'm a sucker for both games and violence, so Hunger Games scratched an itch that hadn't been scratched for me since Piers' Anthony's Adept Series (the first three of which are some of my favorite books ever written). I loved the Battle Royale manga despite the provocatively mature content, and so Hunger Games was like that for me in book form. It's amazing to me how an author can cram so much worldbuilding, characterization and just so much awesome into so few pages. I finished it in half a day or so while waiting in the airport and flying to Seattle. It's a reminder that you don't need 300,000 words to tell a brilliant story. If you haven't read this book. Go. Read. Now. Then come back. I'll wait.
I'm tempted to scrap my Y.A. novel right now because unfortunately, so many elements are so similar it's going to look like a rip-off. A bad rip-off, because Collins is so much more adept at handling emotion. I don't always have a deft hand there--sometimes I turn pathos into bathos.
Ah well, I can always finish the novel now and not send it out for a decade. Or hide my name under a pseudonym and never admit to writing it. NEVER!
Well, after I get that banged out of the way, the next project I'm looking at is a dark fantasy loosely based on the French Revolution but with gladiators and stuff like that. It'll be much darker in tone than Godsplay. The main POV character is a painter, another one is a drag queen. No clue on the title yet, except maybe "Wyrmborn" because the ancient kings claim they are descended from the blood of dragons and claim ancient powers because of that, to wield against the righteous-yet-fanatical revolutionaries. The problem is I've got five or six P.O.V. characters right now but not much of a plot, but I'm still in the research phase. Anyway, I'm excited about the idea.
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I liked Hunger Games, too, but that's a heck of a cliffhanger ending. Which was fine, because the sequel's out. But IT also ends on a terrible cliffhanger. One of those series that just needs to be finished before you acquire all the books and read them in one sitting!
Your dark fantasy sounds cool.
Have you read Flora Segunda yet? It's awesome.
I've been meaning to read The Hunger Games. Now I will--right after I finish Godsplay.
(Yes, the prodigal has returned. Again.)