Dawnbreaker Review

I don't normally do reviews, but having just finished a book and having free time on my hands, I figure I'd give my thoughts...

I just read Dawnbreaker by Jocelynn Drake and it certainly entertained. There's something to be said for Danaus. To be honest, I think I almost like hearing about the part-bori/part-human more than Mira herself. The mystery that's integral to his character remains fascinating to me, probably because it's fascinating to our narrator.

Ms. Drake gave Mira enough strengths and enough weaknesses to make her a believable MC. However, there were a couple moments in this book (as in Dayhunter which I just read this past week as well) that I wanted to scream at her. I mean, Mira has control over fire, people! After 600+ years, I'd think that using her fire is second-nature to her... which I believe it says something like that in the book itself. If that's the case, then why, on several occasions did she wait until either she or one of her compatriots are injured to burn those naturi to a crisp? I just don't get it.

Of course, I realize, that for certain plot points/scenes to work, then certain things have to escape our heroine's notice. And maybe that's the reason behind it, but as a reader it's a tad frustrating. And at the end... well, I don't want to give away the end, but Mira has it within her power to end this whole drama, but she doesn't. In the epilogue, she laments the choice, which, yeah. I would too. And if "this whole drama" were to have ended, then there wouldn't be another book now would there?

I can see that the next books in this series have plenty of room for some great plots and I'm excited to see that. It took me a couple books to get into this series, but I think Danaus has finally captured my heart. I think it's the brooding, dark-haired, blue-eyed thing he's got goin' on. :)

One thing that I do think Jocelynn has done very well is balancing Danaus and Mira's relationship with one another. On every page I can feel the tremulousness of their alliance. But at the same time, I can tell by her thoughts (and his actions) that when it finally does come time for them to have a showdown that things won't be as easy as both of them constantly joke about. I am SO looking forward to that. And the romance-reader in me wants to see them both get some action!

I've noticed that Ms. Drake's books (at least the most current two, I haven't read Nightwalker in a while) have a rather different kind of pacing from what I'm used to reading. In the Dark Days series, Dayhunter and Dawnbreaker center around an event that will be happening. Because said event is mentioned so much throughout the book, I feel almost like, "Okay, are we there yet?"

By reminding the reader so constantly of the timeline, I find myself impatient. It feels like every event that happens in the book is getting in the way of the climax instead of leading up to it. It's not bad, per se. It's just... different. And the climax happens at the very end (I mean like VERY end) of the book. There's perhaps ten pages after the big showdown and I just don't get enough closure for that. Granted, that is probably what works for Mira's story, but I'm just not used to it.

Overall, I really did enjoy this book. Plenty of action and I can't wait to read more about our enigmatic Danaus (and Mira, of course).

The Dark Days series by Jocelynn Drake:
Nightwalker
Dayhunter
Dawnbreaker

Freedom, Frustration, and Fun

How do you like that alliteration, hm?

As you can tell by the title (or maybe not) I've been busy. I finished my last didactic (aka classroom/lecture) quarter of pharmacy school on Tuesday. I passed all my classes and actually I avoided C's this quarter! Bam said the lady! However, on Monday I will start my first rotation at a local Target pharmacy. It'll be great experience to learn my counseling points for the drugs I'm not totally comfortable with yet. However, I might not be getting home 'til 8:30 M, T, W, F. I think my preceptor wants me to work 4-10's with her since she has Thursdays off. *sigh* But then, it's only for six weeks. I can live, right? ;-)

And onto writerly things: I've spent the better part of the past two days writing up a chapter play-by-play document for Untold Secrets. Let me just tell you... ARGH! As I was lamenting to my wonderful CP, Cari, there is just so much that as I was reading through the MS all I could think was, "This is complete crap." Or, "This is SO not necessary". Or, "Where the Hell are all these adverbs coming from?!"

I never noticed adverbs (whether in narration or dialogue tags) until Cari brought it to my attention. And now I see them everywhere. In my writing, in published works, or in MSs I'm helping to edit. Some of 'em I leave b/c they're what I needed, but seeing the empty adverbs are the worst. And boy did I have a lot of them.

Regardless, my reason for doing this play-by-play is to visualize my story via post-it/whiteboard!!! That's right! I got that aforementioned whiteboard and it's now hanging on my wall. Tadaaaa!Yes, I blurred everything out again, though you can probably make out the name Isaac. And yes, it's upside down. I put on the pen-holder thingy upside down just to see if it would go on and lo and behold, it wouldn't come off. So I've gotta rearrange, but that's all for the best since Untold Secrets will be going on there now instead of its sequel, which is up there at the moment.

Anyway, writing out all the scenes via the play-by-play onto post-its will help me visualize the book. More importantly, it will hopefully help me see what can come out. B/c at 138K, US is just WAAAAY too big. I'm aiming to get it down to 115K and that's on the high side for a first Urban Fantasy novel. Still, that's 23K to whittle down. However, based on this brief skimming I've done, I'm going to have a lot to switch up and remove so I just might actually make this a workable novel soon. Which would be ideal since I told myself I will start querying once I graduate in June.

Nevertheless, I still like working with these characters and I love em too much to just chuck the whole MS. Plus, it's proof that I've grown as a writer since I started writing/developing US two years ago. So that's where the "fun" part of the title comes in. Writing is still (and I hope will always be) fun for me and that's all I can ask for. :)

Update and Plotting Goodness

It has occurred to me multiple times these past weeks that I have neglected my blog posts. My poor blog. :( At least I have the excuse of having been insanely busy these past couple weeks. September is the only month that all three pharmacy classes will be on campus at once (my class being the one leaving to go out on our final rotations a week from Monday). So there was all these events that had to happen and the handing over of the reins (I'm outgoing president of one of the professional organizations).

This past weekend I hung out with one of my friends from undergrad, attended APhA's end of the year banquet, got my hair done (and a massage. woot!), worked, went to an induction ceremony, then hung out with friends from work at Dave & Busters. I know what you're thinking... that doesn't sound like me. Trust me, I was exhausted on Sunday. I stayed home all day catching up on Tivo and giving my poor cat some attention. Oh... and also... I brainstormed/plotted.

My method is Rachel Vincent-inspired. She did a post on her blog a week or so ago showing her whiteboard method. As I didn't have a whiteboard this is what I came up with:
Yeah, I blurred it out since, surprisingly, my camera was able to capture enough to make it semi-readable. Not that my gibberish would mean anything to anyone but me. But nevertheless... you may have noticed that it's a cutting mat. For crafting. However, I've since come to realize the drawback of the surface... you can't write on it. And those red notes over to the right? That's what I would have liked to have written on a whiteboard, but wasn't able to b/c, of course, it wasn't a whiteboard.

I'm hoping to rectify the situation tomorrow by making a trip to OfficeMax. Yes, a 2'x3' whiteboard is a semi-investment ($45!) but I think in the end it'll be worth it. :)
Now, my post-its (thank you Rachel for the SuperSticky suggestion!) may look a little haphazard, but I will explain a little... The green and orange are for secondary characters that I want to see worked in. The purple is the main plot. The teal is the MC's inner struggle. And like Rachel, I've found that I work up-down, left-right instead of left to right. It just seems more logical when post-its are involved.

The pink ones are miscellaneous scenes that I'm not sure (as of yet) where they fit in the big scheme of things in terms of conflict. And the board isn't even finished yet. It did help me, however, in organizing some things in ways that my mind wasn't working before. So yay for inspiration...

The problem is I think I have to re-read and re-plot all of US, given its mammoth length. Therefore, some of those scenes may have to be used in this one I'm plotting on the board. *sigh*

One more thing before this mammoth entry comes to a close: the new Three Days Grace album was released today and next Tuesday is Breaking Benjamin's new album. They posted the song clips on the amazon page for it and I can't freaking wait. Both of those bands give me such great inspiration and writing material to work with. Their sort of my muses sometimes. :)

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to keep up a little bit more with blog entries in the coming weeks.

Cover Machine

I am a cover-making machine lately. Okay, I've only made 3 or 4, but they're addicting! Made some for me and one for my wonderful cousin. Just having a cover for a book makes me want to write more. "I must have awesome writing to go with this awesome cover!" I know these covers will never see the light of day, but nevertheless they are fun! I'd post them here, but I used deviantart pics that weren't stock and I haven't gotten permission to post them. Oh, except for the one I did for my cousin. That main one was stock. But I don't have my dear cousin's permission to post it. Let's just say that they kick ass. ;-) Ooh! Ooh! Wait, this one is stock too! I can show you! :D



And before I hear anything about how I'm wasting time doing these that I could spend ya know, actually writing... I will say that in doing one of these I was forced to think of a title. And it's a title that I'm actually totally happy with!! So it got some creative juices flowing and I got to find another creative outlet for my brain. :)

Hooray!

I wrote 1K today! *happy dance* The only problem is that the scene I wrote is something that took place ten years prior to the book. lol How's that for irony? I finally manage to write something and it's not even anything I can get real wordcount points for. *sigh* But regardless, I think that writing this scene is helping me work out some kinks in my MC for WIP#3.

She had a very earth-shattering event happen to her ten years ago and it's helping me get a handle on her psyche to get it all written out. It's one thing to say, "When she was eighteen years old, such and such happened. Blah blah blah." It's another thing to actually write it out and discover firsthand (okay, first person) the details of what happened. I learn who my MC was back then and how much of a contrast that is to who she is now.

Oh, and the songs that were on repeat during the writing of this?

Olafur Arnalds: 1440 and Raein

I think you can listen to Raein here. Click on Day 2 to listen to it. And you can even download it! I sure did! ;-) It even gives you directions on how to. And the low-res version sure sounds good enough for me. I guess my ears aren't discerning enough.

Anyway, Raein is an incredibly beautiful, incredibly sad song IMO and thus, perfectly suited for this scene. Well, I just had to post my success, what little there is to be had for today. I don't get to update a word count meter, but oh well. I'll take what I can get I guess. :)

*edit* Strike that, 1800 words not a mere 1000. Bam, said the lady (yes, that is Nathan Fillion verbage there)!

Procrastination and holding out on the reader

It's been entirely too long since I've actually posted a "real" blog. That goes for any progress in writing or really, anything of interest. I mean, the cat .gif and video are perfectly entertaining and still make me laugh every time... but the blog has been sparse as of late. I wish I could say it's been because I've been hard at work on school matters or at least getting some writing done. Such is not the case. :( I will give myself forty lashes for that, don't worry. While I could ramble on for a long time about how frustrated I am with 3 WIPs, I actually HAVE something in particular to talk about today...

I just finished Robert Ludlum's The Matarese Circle a couple nights ago (freaking finally!) and I noticed something that happens every once in a while in books. It's a device that always gets on my nerves as a reader... but not necessarily in a bad way. The device? Say the MC has some dialogue with someone who's finally bringing the plot threads and story together. It's a book-making moment. The identity of the villain is revealed. The place a hostage was taken. Something vitally important. And what does the author do? In Ludlum's case (I'm paraphrasing here). "Bray asked the identity of the man in the picture." / "She told him."

My reaction to these devices? Every single time, without fail: "WTF?!?!?! TELL ME!!!! I don't care if she told him. I'm the one that needs to know here! Hello! Faithfully been reading for like 500 pages!"

See, my problem is I'm pretty historically inaccurate at guessing the secret in any story. CSI? I think I've guessed right maybe 2 episodes out of hundreds. My track record with books isn't much better. Now, in The Matarese Circle's case I actually knew who was in the picture. But he'd done the same thing before in the book.

The thing is, this is a very valid plot device... one that never occurs to me when I'm writing. I'd keep typing on thinking, "Well, golly gee, I wish there was a way for my MC to know this piece of information, but then the audience will know too!"

I guess my question is this: If you write, have you ever thought of incorporating (or actually done it) this "holding out on the reader" thing. Or, if you read, what's your reaction to this type of thing? Does it make you frustrated? Or do you like it?

Oh, and do you know of any real name for this? It's not a cliffhanger. It's not misdirection. It's just... not telling. Anywho... I guess I should get back to studying now, though my motivation to do so is pitifully low. *trudges off*

The muse has released me... I think

I've never been in quite a situation like this. Three completely separate works-in-progress. I think my muse has finally realized that. She had a chokehold on my creativity for the past several weeks, demanding I figure out the main plot of WIP#3. I sort of did. Not all of the details, but I got more figured out than I had known before.

The problem was, the narrative wasn't writing itself. Nowhere near as well as Angie's voice in WIP#2 (aka Reaper). So is it destined to be written third person? Who knows. I'll take that as it comes. What's interesting to me now is that Alex's world is starting to come back to me, likely thanks to BBC's Being Human. Filled with beautiful accents that I adore and a tortured vampire that could beat Edward's ass any day. And in his character, I saw a little bit of Kade. I'd forgotten how much I missed writing him! Ever since I finished the VERY rough draft of Untitled 1, I've been pretty much removed from their world. I'd written about 7.5K in Untitled 2 of Alex's world, making that story WIP#1.

Confused? Let me recap:
- WIP#1 is Alex's world complete with murder, intrigue, vampires and werewolves.
- WIP#2 is Angie's world complete with angels, demons, rogues, and a battle over Sin City
- WIP #3 is Sam's world complete with a chaos-wielding assassin, deception, and a high school sweetheart who thought Sam died ten years ago when she went missing...

The problem is, all three of these things are immensely interesting to me and I want to write all of them. Could I be one of those people capable of writing multiple stories at once? Do I have writing ADD? Who knows. Maybe this is the solution... rotating between WIPs. Regardless, I'm taking advantage of the reprieve the muse has alotted me. If she'll let me work on Alex and crew, then what am I waiting for, hm? Off to see what writing I can get done today. And studying. Argh.

And yes, I have tweaked this template. Made it a little more colorful. Played with fonts, etc. Would help if I knew more html, but I'm happy with what I have so far. :)