nindogs

Yes, I am quite alive. I am blistering in my severity of alivedness and am prepared for all sorts of gatherings, shindigs and hootenannies once my half-yearly exams are done and dusted. All reviewing, reading and writing (including that of this blog) have been put on pause - though I have been on Tumblr a little more than I should have. I am attempting to memorise facts and theses about EMMA, The King's Speech, Tutankhamen and burial practices, Picasso's cubism, Banksy and Velasquez's social status, and JFK and the political events pre-WWI. So, you know, just swimming in the fun. So, in case you had even the slightest inclination to wonder where my dreadful cynicism had disappeared to: No, my neighbours did not find my clothes in the street because I was snatched up by Rapture. No, the Doctor did not steal me away. I am buried in my textbooks and essays. You will, however, have me all to yourself on Friday, or Thursday (depending on where you are in the time zone sense of...

Go, click on the banner to the left! The members of Group 9 of Rachael Harrie's Second Platform-Building Crusade all banded together, just like the Justice League or the Avengers, and came up with a little adventure for you. You remember those books. Second-person, frustrating, the type where you ended up getting vaporised by a googly-eyed alien in the backseat of a movie theatre. But alas, your adventure does not start here. Go on back to Kerri Cuevas' blog to start your voyage into the unknown . Don't worry, you'll work your way up to me if you choose wisely. But if you've already done that, look below. Mothers lift cars off of their pinned-down children, minute schoolgirls beat the stuffing out of their assailants, and you? You leg it. The furry faces blur into their frosty surrounds as you swivel. The camera lands on your toe and rockets forward, skidding across the ice faster than your feet can carry you off the mark. Your life’s work? Ha. You can forget it. R...

( Psssst : Did you get my terrible punny joke?) I love series. (Eugh, plural rules, why do you rain on my autumnal parade?) I really do. HARRY POTTER, INFERNAL DEVICES, CURSE WORKERS, MORTAL INSTRUMENTS, etc. When it comes to YA, there is nothing that does it for me better than a good series. But I stand before you today, perched upon my shiny soapbox in my Sunday best (And yes, by that I mean slippers, pyjama bottoms and a Doctor Who t-shirt) to tell you that some later additions to these series are amazingly unnecessary. Yes, you heard me. Unnecessary . And to sum up the general feeling toward these unnecessary additions that are only in place because the publishing industry are cash-cows that really like to milk things until they're about as dry as an infertile woman's uterus (Bare with me: it's late and my metaphors and similes come to me from a strange place that's only visible to the naked eye at midnight.) you could have a quick look here , here and well, here ...

We all have our sub-genres and we all know that feeling when someone tells us some other author just got a seven-figure advance for a novel in said sub-genre or when an agent refuses your sub-genre on their webpage. We know that feeling that melts your gut and makes your arms feel cold like when you get a flu injection when you see a novel on Goodreads.com that has rave reviews and falls into your sub-genre just as well as your own work does. It might not even be that. It might be that you're inspired with what you believe to be an original story that is plaguing your dreams and your waking moments that falls into the sub-genre that was so two minutes ago. You're having a small heart attack when you're not creating this story, because you know that anyone with half a brain would laugh and spit in your face if you proposed this story to them. Everyone understands this. They can empathise. But you need to take a step back and have a good think about this. Almost every bestse...