I hadn't checked my profile page on Livejournal for awhile, and I just noticed a bunch of new people friended me. Please introduce yourself, and I'll see what I can do about friending back. Most of my juiciest posts are friends-locked, you know.

I've been on a writing hiatus due to studies, work, and life. No spectacular news on the querying front, and my newest novel Unseen has been marinating for the past few weeks (month?). It's all okay with me, though, because I should have more time eventually.

I just got a haircut today and went from shaggy to chic. Hopefully. If you want to see what I've done to my hair over the past year or so... I've gone from waist-length hair to chopping 14 inches off to letting it grow shoulder-length to getting bangs for the first time in perhaps a dozen years. I love where my hair is at today.

If you're curious why I go by Ravelda online, that's the name of my first novel and the heroine within it. My userpic is Ravelda's werewolf eye. I haven't looked at this manuscript for months, maybe a year. Despite the old writing, I still have a soft spot for the characters in Ravelda. Hmm. At the moment Unseen has me the most excited, though I would like to dust off Ravelda one day.

 

I was dinking around trying to turn my latest novel idea into a fully fledged premise when bling! The lightbulb went off. Something was indeed missing: magic. Yes, I said I would write a contemporary literary YA novel, but I can't resist making it a literary urban fantasy. The introduction of one key idea makes all the other ones click together into a complete plot. I just wrote a blurb for the novel and I'm excited. Oh, and I'm retitling it Unseen. I'm not telling what the fantasy element is because I'm not jinxing it.

Today I made quite a few interesting discoveries. No drumroll necessary:

-I found out more about my current protagonist, Vincent, and his first embarassing experience in a college cafeteria. He's a rather self-conscious, serious person, and he has crappy eyesight, so it's Not Good when he trips over something and spills his tray of food everywhere. Luckily for him, though he doesn't know it, he meets his future girlfriend then.

-I always pick up fallen coins, for luck and/or just because I can. Anyway, this afternoon I dumped all the coins in one place and discovered a silver dime and a Canadian penny. I also have a British five pence coin for some reason.

-On the busses around Olympia you often see very colorful characters. Today I saw a college student guy with muttonchops, khakis, a white dress shirt, black bowtie, and a black looks-like-leather jacket streaked with white, green, and red paint. Yeah.

-There's quite a bit of cool street art around Oly. Somebody just stencilled a hissing black cat onto a red newspaper stand, and there's also a raccoon sillhouette on campus. On the side of this brick building (a bar, I think) there's a fantastic mural of Marvel superheroes.

-The bumper stickers are cool around here, too. Today I saw a green grenade with dragon wings sticker (perhaps for the band Green Day). One of my neighbors has one that says, "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."

-The people in my apartment complex throw away perfectly good stuff on a regular basis. I've already dumpster-dived two black drawers (for holding stuff), a computer desk, an even better computer desk/bookshelf (probably straight from Staples), about a dozen planters (one of them came with onion plants; poor things), and today I found a floor lamp with a glass table built in. I cleaned it off, plugged it in, and it works fine. Right now it's holding a metal peacock statuette from Goodwill, a baby spider plant, and my aforementioned fallen coin collection. I left my real coin collection at home.

-Oh, nearly forgot: I was coming down with conjunctivitis again, but I'd heard that a black tea rinse gets rid of it. So I tried it. Lo and behold, in two days the pink eye totally cleared up. I'm pleasantly surprised.

-Okay! Now I'd better get back to work writing and finishing my last homework of the quarter.

I have a rather interesting question... if you're writing a novel about a 18-year-old guy who's just starting college, is it still young adult? My novel would definitely be at least upper YA, considering the content and language. I'm actually worried about overdoing the bannable elements (sex, drinking, profanity, drugs, etc.), but it seems truest to my experiences. What's the market for novels set in college, anyway? I haven't read enough books like this; recommendations are appreciated.

You may be wondering why on earth the subject of this post contains both "ouch" and "yay!" Well. Right as I was recovering from laryngitis (laughing at my own raspy voice didn't help), I caught conjunctivitis. (A few months ago I had conjunctivitis, tonsillitis, and an ear infection all at the same time... I wonder if that also has an -itis name.) Today I had a three-hour, open book literature exam, and carrying about a dozen massive books across the campus did something ouchy to my back. I think I pulled a muscle. But... I'm still saying yay because I'm done with the last exam of the quarter as well as all my final homework. Only one week left, besides evaluation week. Then I'm freeee, freeee! And I can work on Invisible some more, because that narrator is whispering in my ear.

I'm stalking luck right now, creeping up on it so I can swoop down and catch it in a jar. I caught a little bit today when I talked with the professors for the program I want to take next quarter. They basically said there's no way I won't get in, and the program sounds really fascinating: hardcore linguistics and programming, exploring how languages work and how we can generate our own. I caught more luck by coming up with the last scene for Invisible. It's going to be a contemporary literary novel, very emotionally driven, narrated in a voice like nothing I've tried before. And I'm falling for it already.

I found this photo of an unknown Victorian man with albinism... the expression on his face makes me wonder what he was thinking, or what his life must have been like. I'm especially curious because my WIP features a narrator with albinism.

I've finished writing the first chunk of scenes in my contemporary YA Invisible. I didn't say first chapter because I've decided to go chapterless. The narrator, Vincent, tells his story to a silent, invisible second person. Vincent doesn't stick to a chronological progression of events, but rather the events unfold emotionally, as if he's crumpled up his memories into a tight ball and is just starting to look at them again. While retelling them, he's realizing his mistakes and maturing. Anyway, I've rambled. What do you think of chapterlessness in a novel?

I have the strange desire to dig up and revive my unfinished novel The Dark & the Glittering, which several people have recently said sounds intriguing. I actually wrote over 20,000 words, but wasn't sure how to structure the story. After plotting the crap out of Other, though, maybe I have what it takes. I've never been able to get these characters out of my head.

Do you want to win three books: Poison Study, Magic Study and Fire Study by Maria V. Snyder? Head on over. Deadline is March 1. Good luck!

If you like reading about everything from college life in Colorado to treehugging to writing, hop on over to the blog of  raven_estrellaand say hello. She has requested an introduction to the fine ladies and gentleman of my friends list. And I must note that raven_estrella is in fact the cousin of ravelda.

I've decided to name my new protagonist Vincent. Thanks, britlitfantwin andsora_blue! I've always liked that name, and it seems to suit his personality. People might call him "Vin" for short. His surname... I'm thinking Beck or Beckham, since I started writing this right after reading Beckett's Watt. Or else his surname might be something ironic like Black or Frost or Blake. I feel like he needs a middle name, too. He's that kind of person... I already have a clear mental image of Vincent. Slim with short white hair and intense pale blue eyes. It's most interesting, how characters clump together in the author's mind.
 

I just started a new novel that popped out of nowhere. It's contemporary young adult without a bit of fantasy--I've never written a novel that wasn't fantasy before--and it's narrated by a guy just starting college. Keywords that seem to fit him: brilliant, bitter, silent, obsessive, artistic, intense. He also has albinism, though he doesn't want that to be his defining feature. I know nothing about his name other than it's not anything close to  "Jasper," because a girl called him that and he said she got it wrong. Any ideas? I love names, but not necessarily naming a character.