Thursday, January 19, 2012

Making some good changes

I graduated college last month and began obtaining my freedom into the land of adulthood where dreams flourish and...pigs fly. Well, as a writer with a sudden increase in free time until I start my new job, I've been making some changes.

"I'm Writing a Novel, Officer!" --Weird Things I've Googled For Something I was Writing

http://redriverpak.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/devious.jpg
If you take a glance at my web browsing history after I finish a writing session, you are likely to come away with three conclusions:
  1. I can’t spell “beaurocracy” (bureaucracy as it turns out), often not even close enough for Google to figure it out.
  2. A Good portion of my time “writing” is actually spent on Tumblr, Facebook, and Pandora.
  3. I might be planning to commit some pretty God-damned serious murder. 



Friday, January 6, 2012

"Fantasy" is NOT The Same Goddam Thing as "Scifi"


Every time I walk into a bookstore or library, I usually make a brief stop in the section labeled "Science Fiction." Yes, yes, I'm a nerd, but if you'll stop snickering now, I'm going to make a point of literary taxonomy that may just blow your mine; Goddamn dragons and swords and magic and scantily clad amazonian warrior women do not belong in the goddamn "science fiction" section...

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Review: The Demonata By Darren Shan

Darren Shan, best known for his Cirque Du Freak series, finished his ten-piece Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and horror-ridden series The Demonata in 2010.

A friend of mine recommended the story to me, lending me her copies of the first four books. The first, Lord Loss, although possibly slow at times for me, was a delightful read overall, and I was quite curious to continue.

I wasn't let down as the story came to a close. There were many plot points that surprised me, and since it is a fantasy piece primarily (with strong Sci-Fi later on), that is a good thing. I don't like being able to figure out the plot of a story hundreds of pages in advance, and with The Demonata, I was rarely able to guess how things would go until toward the end of the tenth book.

Darren Shan has a wonderful talent for horror, guts, humor, and dialogue. The last two may seem out of place, and that's fine.

One of my biggest points of contention was in the number of books. I don't think it needed to last ten. Given that, the actual events were nearly perfect for the story. I wouldn't remove any of them, again, just the number of books. Books seven and eight could have been merged into two parts of the same book. The same could be said for 9 and 10, but then again not everyone loves to read epically long books.

I find that I want the story to continue. I finished it half an hour ago and I miss many parts of it. Darren Shan reached his goal for me: he entertained me, and taught me some life lessons (or at least reinforced).

To learn more about Darren Shan, please visit his website: http://www.darrenshan.com/demons/index.html

Till next time,

JK

Monday, January 2, 2012

One Year, Baby!

Today at Seven Heroes Books, we are celebrating our one year anniversary. Quite exciting! And, this event provides us with some sort of requirement to summarize what we have done in the past year, and what we may have learned.

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