UPDATE!

That thing you wear around your neck with your graduation gown? It's a stole. Mine is light blue.

(GRADUATION DATE: TOMORROW.)

Happy Dia de Los Muertos, and Happy Nanoing!

Hi! It's Friday, it's the First of November, and you know what that means. It's Nanowrimo. It's the Day of the Dead. And it happens to the start of what hopefully is a great month.

First off, Nanowrimo -- writing a novel in a month. Yes, I'm participating. (Q: What should I be doing write right now? A: Not writing blog posts!) My idea is weird, and involves rebellions, other worlds, and Mozart. It's titled "The Wolfgang" for right now. I might be referring to it obsessively over the next month, and shall usually abbreviate it to WG.

Now, yea, I haven't finished my other draft. I'm decently sure I can keep up 3k words a day -- 2,000 words for WG, and 1,000 for WR. ("Wretched Roads". Mages, healers, and curses, if you care to know.)

As for Dia de los Muertos... It's a Mexican holiday celebrated on November 1st and 2nd, honoring dead loved ones. I've written about it before, a couple weeks ago. So instead of a long rant on something that has little relevance, here's a list of Spanish words:

• Calaveras -- skulls. Also, there are calaveras de azucar (accent on the u), which are sugar skulls. 
• Calacas -- skeletons.  From what I know, these are very popular, like Halloween skeletons are popular: toy skeletons on the altars or for the children, cloth/plastic ones on poles that they parade through the street, etc.
• Altar -- well, an altar. Not too hard to figure out. The table on which they set offerings of food, flowers, and photographs to the dead loved one.
• Cempachusil (accent on u) -- marigolds. They put these "flor de los muertos" (flowers of the dead) on the graves or altars of loved ones. 
• El pan de los muertos -- bread of the dead. Literally, bread they leave on the altar for their loved ones.

 

November is a grand, brown-ish, most-definitely-autumn month. It generally means cold, lack of sleep, picking up the academic pace, and writing a novel for me. But it's also full of colorful leaves, and days off from school for Thanksgiving, and snuggling under five or six different blankets without feeling stifling-hot.

So, here's to dead people, writing too much too fast, and a brown month full of leaves and cold. Who says a little cold is bad for you, after all? It clears your lungs from all those words that scratch at your ribcage, ready to crawl out.

Have a blessed Friday and weekend!

Sweetgrass Basket by Marlene Carvell

In prose poetry and alternating voices, award-winning author Marlene Carvell weaves a heartbreakingly beautiful story based on the real-life experiences of Native American children.

Mattie and Sarah are two Mohawk sisters sent to an off-reservation school after the death of their mother. Subject to intimidation and corporal punishment, with little hope of contact with their father, the girls are taught menial tasks to prepare them for life as domestics. How Mattie and Sarah protect their culture, memories of their family life, and their love for each other under this forced assimilation makes for a powerful, unforgettable historical novel.

~Print copy (library), 243 pages
Published: 2005 by Dutton Children's Books

This book... definitely worth a read.

At first, I thought this would be a bit plot-slow, that this would be a fast read. But the characters are rather engaging -- Mattie, the rebellious elder sister, looking after her little sister Sarah, who in turn wanted to keep her older sister out of trouble; Ruthie and Gracie, their friends who might be more fearful but try to be loyal nonetheless; and, of course, the evil villain, Mrs. Dwyer, who runs the school.

It's set in a special school during the early 1900s (late 1890s?), meant for Native Americans to learn English and "White People" culture. Of course, this was before things like making girls work in a boiling hot laundry room all day was frowned upon. Mrs. Dwyer, the headmistress (or whatever her title is; I'm not really an expert on school titles from over a century ago) has the girls march every place, makes sure Mattie and Sarah -- who've never been apart -- don't have beds next to each other's, and when they don't follow rules, has them skip supper. At one point, Mattie writes a beautiful short story about her mother's basket weaving, and when the English teacher tries to have it published in their school newspaper, Mrs. Dwyer has it crushed for being too "Native American".

There is, of course, a plot, though it drags a bit in the first half of the novel. It's written quite beautifully, though, between the two sisters. The plot really picks up about halfway through, when the abuse suffered at the hands of Mrs. Dwyer gets worse, due to her thinking that rebellious little Mattie stole a brooch of hers.

The verse format makes this an easy read, but not a "dumb" or "inferior" read. It's just as complicated and real as a real novel. It's written almost directly how the characters think, and not along traditional styles of worldbuilding and scene-setting. It's more sparse, like poetry that insinuates the scenery in fewer words.

I also like the incorporation of Native American words into the novel, words like "Father" and "Mother" that really makes the whole family theme stick out without pushing it in your face. And how Carvell adds details of home, of their culture, into the current scene; things like a basket taken from home, how they remember the river outside their home, short myth stories (or really, summaries of those stories). It really makes this book stand out as not some "boring historical" but as a deep, cross-cultural novel.

Overall, this novel was pretty heart-rending. I didn't like the ending, though I appreciated the inevitability of it -- not that I'll spoil it for you. But it has a genuine, beautiful feel to it, and I recommend that everyone read it. Four stars.

  

Museum of Thieves by Lian Tanner

Welcome to the tyrannical city of Jewel, where impatience is a sin and boldness is a crime.
Goldie Roth has lived in Jewel all her life. Like every child in the city, she wears a silver guardchain and is forced to obey the dreaded Blessed Guardians. She has never done anything by herself and won't be allowed out on the streets unchained until Separation Day. 
When Separation Day is canceled, Goldie, who has always been both impatient and bold, runs away, risking not only her own life but also the lives of those she left behind. In the chaos that follows, she is lured to the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she meets the boy Toadspit and discovers terrible secrets.Only the cunning mind of a thief can understand the museum's strange, shifting rooms. Fortunately, Goldie has a talent for thieving. 
Which is just as well, because the leader of the Blessed Guardians has his own plans for the museum -- plans that threaten the lives of everyone Goldie loves. And it will take a daring thief to stop him...
Museum of Thieves is a thrilling tale of destiny and danger, and of a courageous girl who has never been allowed to grow up -- until now.

~Print copy (library), 312 pages
Published: 2010 by Delacorte Press

[First of all, Happy June! I didn't get a chance to say that on the 1st day of the month, this past Saturday -- SATs suck. But anyways, brilliant yellowy month of sunshine and summer vacation! Yay! And, as a side note, I find it hilarious that my computer doesn't seem to think "Toadspit" is an actual word.]

Anyways, back to the book.

There are good things to this book. For one thing, it really marks how clearly Goldie has changed over the book, without hitting you over the head with it. For example, in the beginning of the novel, right after she runs away, she shivers in a boat all day and tries not to (and fails in trying not to) cry.

But then, near the middle-ish of the book (I don't like spoiling the endings), she faces a Brizzlehound, a huge black dog thought to be extinct but legendary for tearing humans to pieces, and she doesn't cry. She thinks of saving herself. (She didn't need to. But that's a long story -- about 312 pages worth. Read the book.)

Then, of course, in the end, she's got to be even braver and all that jazz. But it's really interesting, seeing how this coddled child is given a chance to be bold and takes it.

Also, the thought of adults chaining children to them, "to keep them from getting lost", is a horrifying idea. I like horrifying ideas. (You know, when they're confined within the pages of a book.)

Also, MUSEUM OF THIEVES. What could be more horrifying and fascinating at the same time? Especially one that shifts. Creepy mansion/museum/school type places that have weird or shifting rooms is a favorite trope of mine.

What didn't I like? Well, the author is a little ellipse-happy. I've never come across a book that's ellipse-happy, but here you go. (Ellipses are those "...." that come at the end of something, in case you didn't know.) Umm... The enemy -- the Blessed Guardians' leader, the Fugleman -- was a pretty cut-and-paste villain, but I don't really hate him. Well, cut and paste in that he seemed pretty obviously evil and charming, like most villains are, instead of the gray-matter villains that are more plausible. But he wasn't, like, a moron who monologued his plan to everyone he met. He was decently intelligent.

(Is monologued a word? My computer says NO!, but I kinda think it is. And if not, then I just made up a new word to rival Shakespeare's *cough*liberal*cough* use of new language.)

But anyways, that's about it. Overall, it was a good novel. I liked it. A couple minor things I didn't like, but it's worth a read, especially to people who like MG like this one. I give it four stars.

 

    

Lipizzaner Horses!

Happy first of May! May is such a short, clean, flowing sort of word. May.

Unfortunately, I'm also swamped. (Another lovely word.) My AP exams are next week, and the honors state tests after that. (They're called SOLs in Virginia. I don't know what they're called elsewhere.) I hate it when schoolwork trumps everything else, but life has been designed that way for me. By the adults who keep me focused on The Future.

I'm currently watching a documentary on PBS on Lipizzaner horses, which are apparently very, very famous and very, very prestigious. The program's called Nature: Legendary White Stallions. Here are some quick notes:

• In the Spanish Riding School, all 73 horses are taken seriously.
• The man in charge is the equiary. (sp?)
• All of the horses are descended from just six horses!
• Personality is crucial in determining where their stalls are in the stable.
• The school was founded by a king in the early 1700s.
• But there are no books in this school; all the knowledge is passed on orally.
• Horseback riding (dancing?) is an artwork, a craft, to them.
• These horses are trained to be able to rear on two legs, and to leap and kick their back hooves at the same time. Also, they're trained to get through an obstacle course with minimal aid from the rider.
• The white horses are born brown or black; it takes six years for their coats to turn white.*
• While at one point these horses came in all colors, they've selectively bred for white for centuries. Now, a dark coat on a horse is rare and lucky.
• These horses are the best documented in the world, courtesy of the Austrian(Hungarian?) bureaucracy.
• Earliest, the Moors, or the Muslim nomads, used these horses to invade Spain. They conquered it in the year 711.This time period was characterized by religious tolerance and a Golden Age.
• It would take 700 years until the Christians took it back, under the leadership of Isabella and Ferdinand. In the infamous Spanish Inquisition.**
• These Arabic left their mark on horse-breeding in Spain, though. Beauty, refinement, power -- these Spanish horses became coveted luxuries.
• In the 1500s, classical horse riding became popular again. Archduke Charles of Austria came to bring these horses into European popularity and to domesticate them to the landscape. (1580?)

Well, that's what I've got. I'm eating supper, watching TV, and writing a blog post at the same time, so pardon any inaccuracies. I'm prone to mishearing things.

Horses are an interesting topic. I haven't really seen a horse since a questionable memory of my older sister riding them in fairs. (That might have been a dream. I don't know.) But I've always wanted to be able to ride one. Animals are lovely, intelligent creatures, and I'd kinda like to see that same personality in a horse's eyes that I see in a cat's.

But this is me meandering. Pontificating. Etc.

How about you? Do you love horses? Did you find a bit of this interesting, or perhaps all of it? Anything I said that sounds inaccurate? Have a blessed Wednesday!

*This is not too shocking to me. It reminds me of how Siamese kittens are born completely white, but the color on their face, paws, and tail come in later. I've raised plenty of Siamese kittens. I know. I've also raised cats whose eyes start out blue but turn yellow over time, but that's only indirectly related.

**I recently read a verse novel on the Spanish Inquisition. Actually, it's the last post before this one -- you see it? Right there in the Blog Archives. It's called the Apprentice's Masterpiece. Also, let me clarify: the Spanish Inquisition was super evil and lasted 3 centuries; it killed hundreds of thousands. I might do a post on that sometime.

Montmorency: Thief, Liar, Gentleman? by Eleanor Updale

When a petty thief falls through a glass roof in his attempt to escape the police, what should have been the death of him marks the beginning of a whole new life, After his broken body is reconstructed by an ambitious young doctor, he is released from prison, and -- with the help of Victorian London's extensive sewer system -- he becomes the most elusive burglar in the city. He adopts a dual existence as a respectable, wealthy gentleman named Montmorency and his degenerate servant Scarper. But Montmorency must always be on his guard. The smallest mistake could reveal his secret and ruin both his lives.
Eleanor Updale's writing is witty and wholly original. With a unique perspective and a voice reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe, Montmorency is a cleverly told, gripping adventure story.

~Print copy (from the library)
Published: 2003 by Orchard Books

I've read this book before. So, immediately, you know that this is a book that caught my spark.

Where to begin?

First off, I like that name. Montmorency. It rolls off the tongue. It sounds really dramatic and exotic and a cool name to have if you're a character from an adventure novel.

I love the premise. Montmorency, or Prisoner 493, is broken; a young doctor by the name Farcett stitches him up again... and shows off his nearly-naked body as a science exhibit for the Scholarly Circle (not the actual name of the group). You know, the rich, snooty scientists, who examine his body as if 493 is not a human being but some sort of practice mannequin. A doll, with scars to show off, so the doctor can tell the crowd how he fixed this problem on his thigh and ask how he might get into that wound on his back.

So, when Montmorency gets out of prison, he writes a note. He dresses like a servant and delivers that note to a fancy hotel, which tells the manager to rent out a suite with a good view to a Montmorency -- meanwhile, he, as the servant Scarper, would prepare the room for his master.

Quite an ingenious plan, really. He learned of the sewer system in one of those scholarly meeting, and he decides to use those sewers to get around the city, stealing valuables and then just dropping down into the filth, out of sight, while the police search vainly aboveground.

As I said, genius premise. I think it kind of speaks for itself.

I really like Montmorency the character, as well. For a prisoner, servant, and snooty elite, he was a good choice for POV. (In 3rd person, of course.) He had freedoms the rich didn't have, and he had the money most servants didn't have, and as a prisoner he'd attended those lectures to show him off, and he learned a great deal from them -- a luxury most prisoners didn't have.

More than that, he was devious and quick-minded, and a darn good actor. He is, of course, morally ambigious and a criminal, but Updale wrote this cleverly enough that he's a really likeable criminal.

My third point: the adventure. The action. His getting around society and fooling everybody makes for a good story, and I didn't mention the surprise at the end. I kind of thought it almost abrupt, that last quarter or so of the book; but in retrospect, you can look back and see how it built up to it. I'm not telling you that ending.

I didn't really have anything against this book. Or if I did, I didn't really notice. I give this a definite 5 stars.

 

On Dreams

[This is a short post, because I'm still recovering from a series of stomachaches I had all morning. Not fun. Anyways.]

A couple months ago in AP Psych, we did dreams (and states of consciousness). A quick overview of what I learned:

1. There are five levels of consciousness: conscious, nonconscious, preconscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Sleep (which I always thought was unconcious) is actually conscious, that first level.

2. Sleep is on a 25 hour cycle of 5 stages.

• Stage 1 is that couple minutes when you're halfway between awake and asleep.
• Stage 2 is when you're fully asleep, but it's not deep sleep yet.
• Stages 3 and 4 are deep sleep - this is the stage where your body heals and grows.
• REM sleep is where you dream: it's often called paradoxical sleep, because your brain is active and your body is paralyzed (to prevent you from getting hurt while acting out your dreams).

3. There are two basic theories for our dreams:

• Freud (the man who came up with that stereotypical "and how do you feel?", lying on a couch, telling someone your deepest secrets) decided dreams are a roadway to the unconscious, that last, deepest level of consciousness. Dreams have underlying meaning; they'll help you solve your problems. They are censored stories that represent our innermost emotions. 
• The activation-synthesis theory is more biological. Our brain is trying to interpret the random electrical activity we have while sleeping. This is why dreams make no sense: our mind is simply throwing random tidbits at us while we're asleep.
• (There's a 3rd theory, the information-processing theory, that basically says dreams are a way to deal with stress. I didn't really count this one as a theory, although AP Psych seems to.)

4. Animals other than humans dream, as well. (This was obvious to me: I live in a house of cats, and have since I was born. Their paws and face twitch in their sleep, which is actually them dreaming.)

5. You can actually dream while you're not in REM sleep - it's called NREM sleep (non-REM sleep). REM sleep is associated with negative emotions, NREM sleep is associated with positive emotions: people with depression actually spend more time in REM sleep, which exacerbates their depression.

6. I remember a program I watched on dreams (I didn't write any notes down for that particular documentary -- I think it was NOVA -- which kinda irks me) that told about a man who decided dreams were actually a biological way to remember danger: your ancestors from Old Stone Age times passed on dreams of falling, of running away, of other dangers to the next generation (through handy genetics). It's been passed all the way down to you, to warn you of the perils of nature. That's why you have nightmares.



 










A lot of writers say they came up with the idea for their book (and indeed, a lot of people in history who aren't writers came up with their ideas) through dreams. Indeed, some of my favorite ideas come up through dreams. What do you think? Are dreams random images, a pathway into your deepest level of consciousness, or a genetic warning?

Have a blessed day, and watch your dreams! You never know what might happen. 

(By the way, the information here is from my AP Psych class and an article, "The Meaning of Dreams" by Jonathan Winson.)

Halloween Writings and Nano

Happy Halloween! Or Happy Recoverings, if you were hit by Hurricane Sandy. (We were all set for power outages and crazy winds here, but we were lucky. Not even a flicker in the lights.)

Also, for those participating in Nanowrimo like me, good luck! Or, Merry Writings! (Gracious wisdom, that sounded like something Charles Dickens would say.)

To celebrate, and as a warmup for tomorrow, I'm posting a short spiff today. It's written right this second, off-the-tip-of-my-tongue. It's not a short story, perhaps not even a scene, but it's writing. Sorry for anything amiss.

The lone black cat stared through the window in the chilly light of dawn. Outside, nothing stirred -- not the people in the houses that lined the other side of the road, not the stray cats and dogs sleeping under bushes, not the birds in the trees. No light shined from the street lamps; it was too dark to see properly, but not dark enough to call night anymore.

The only sign of life was the flickering light from under one of the bushes in her front yard. The fairy light danced, tempting her, but the cat refused to budge. It was her job to watch and protect, not play with fairies.

As dawn bled into morning, the cat flicked her ears. Halloween -- the most important day of the year. Inch-tall figures walked out from under the bush, fairies with fragile wings and nature nymphs with green skin. Busy humans, waking up to work or go to school, passed by the little figures, oblivious to their presence.

Whenever one of the little figures outstepped her bounds, the cat growled, and the little creatures' sensitive ears picked up the warning. They stayed, always, within thirteen feet of their burrow under the bush.

One of the little figures ignored the black cat's warning. The little fairy, glowing blue stepped over the invisible line, looking curiously at the humans passing by. A little human, no more than five years old, spotted it.

In a flash, the black cat bounded away from the window, along the hallway, out the front door. She pinned the offensive fairy to the ground and meowed, more to appease the human boy's curiousity than to punish the little figure underneath her paws.

After the human ambled away, the black cat brought her face up close to the fairy.

"Remember the pact, Little Figure," the cat hissed, with something akin to worry in her words. "It's there for a reason."

"What reason?" the fairy challenged. It was a young fairy, barely an adult, and didn't figure much for a mysterious, centuries-old pact she had nothing to do with.

"To keep the humans from pinning all of you like butterflies," growled the cat. She refused to say more, feeling her duty to protect was fulfilled. She walked back to her perch in the window.

As the day wore on, none of the little figures stepped over the line again. One day of freedom they have, but it was worth keeping that one day than trading it for no freedom at all. By nightfall, the magical little creatures had tired their dancing and gawking, and slipped once again into their otherworldly burrow for another year.

Have a lovely, spooky Halloween!

the ARCs of Writing

*I have been planning to post this for weeks. My schedule's been busy like a bee. (Pardon the alliteration. Though I do love alliteration, like a little kid loves candy. Do you see what I did there? :D)

This is a short post, because this is an easy topic. In fact, I think I've blogged about this before, back in June. This time, I'm adding another element, because they spell a nifty little acronym: ARC.

Action --> Reaction --> Consequence.

An action is when your character does something.

A reaction is when something happens against/for your character and he/she does something against/for it.

A consequence is whatever happens as a result.

Pretty simple to remember? A - R - C - A - R - C...... three lovely words, applied over and over again. This is why I think of the concept of writing as a swinging pendulum, or maybe a dance: it's just one-two-three, one-two-three. It flows from one, to two, to three. This is the only way I come up with ideas and outlines, because it's so simple for me. For example:

Melody Anne went to the ball (action). The prince danced with her, and she threw up because she was so nervous (reaction). The prince left to dance with Cinderella instead (consequence). Melody Anne left the ball at midnight in shame (action). She witnessed Cinderella drop her shoe and picked it up (reaction). The prince thanked her with fifty gold coins and a pony for keeping Cinderella's shoe safe and he went off with it to find his true love (consequence).

That was easy to write and read. It flows from action to reaction to consequence, in chronological order, without any interruptions. You could argue that Melody Anne leaving the ball in shame is a reaction or a consequence of her nervous vomit all over the prince, but I list it as an action because no one is forcing her to leave. She does it because of her own self, her own shame.

Now, that was a pretty small example. It works with entire novels (or so I've read - my first-novel sloppy copy hasn't even reached the midway mark!). This ARC method is a pretty nifty trick if you like outlining, and if you're a pantser, it shouldn't be too hard to go back and incorporate it into something written (I'm not a pantser, so you might get mixed results on that).

This is my bad example:

Donni goes to find a lemonade (action). He stumbles across a little lemonade stand run by a couple of six-year-olds (action). They sneer at his drunken appearance (reaction). He flips their table over, outraged (reaction). But first he yells at them for awhile (reaction). The little girls start crying at the drunken rage (reaction). Donni walks away, forgetting the incident (action).

Despite the obvious atrocity of a drunken man being mean to six-year-olds, Donni has no consequences for his actions. He acts, they react, he reacts, they react, then he walks away and forgets the whole thing, which is an action.

Adding consequences is especially necessary when the actions are bad. It's expected in real life and in fiction that bad guys go to jail, or are punished in some way. We crave it. Our morals refuse to accept bad things going unpunished.

Action --> Reaction --> Consequence.

I didn't study (A); I panic at the sight of the test and randomly guess (R); I get a 70%, or a D, on that test (C).
(True story. American History is freakin' difficult, man.)

ARC means many things. It's Noah's boat; it's an Advanced Reader Copy; it's action/reaction/consequence. It's a good thing to remember ARCs when you're stuck.

Have a blessed week. :)

Follow Friday #17

Follow Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Alison Can Read and Parajunkee. This week's question is...

Q: What is the BIGGEST word you've seen used in a book lately - that made you stop and look it up? Might as well leave the definition and book, too.

Ohmygoodness, I love big words. The complicated, fancy, never-used words. Like Ornethology - the study of birds. Well, actually, that is used - it was the name of an after-school choir at our school one time. Not really a book.
ANYWAYS. Onto my answer. Umm... I know so many words that I rarely have to look them up. (How can I not apply these words to my writing?!)
One of my favorites (I have this on my little dictionary, which is really a bunch of useless words/definitions I typed up on a wordpad document) is MACHICOLATIONS.

MACHICOLATIONS -
an opening in the floor between the corbels of a projecting gallery or parapet, as on a wall or in the vault of a passage, through which missiles, molten lead, etc., might be cast upon an enemy beneath. (n.)


I found this in Eragon, a little less than a year ago. Around last January. Kinda long ago, but still a really cool, really useless word.

And to elaborate, a machicolation is that hole where medieval peoples would pour boiling oil/water/something similar on invading enemies below, if the enemies managed to make it past the main defence. This usually refers to castles: as in, if an enemy made it over the drawbridge and through that main gate, they'd pour something nasty on them from a hole in the ceiling to incapacitate and therefore kill them.

Don't I manage the funniest words. How many of you thought of this? What was your word? Leave a comment, I promise I don't bite people! :)