FANFICTION!

I've just posted a one-chapter Bitterblue (Kristin Cashore, of course) fanfiction on (guess what) my FanFiction account, about Bitterblue's wedding... It's called Ghost Eyes. Please take a look! It isn't very long. I think I have anonymous reviews enabled, so anyone can post a comment. Thanks! :)

I've put this at the top of the story, so I don't know why I feel the need to say it again here, but with it being a fanfiction, all the characters in the story belong to Kristin Cashore, the writer of Bitterblue (which I started rereading yesterday, and I really shouldn't have, because on top of tons of homework and revision, I'm also already reading two (possibly three, I lose count) other books, all of which do not belong to me and need to be given back to friends and the school library at some point...)

Anyway, if you've not read Bitterblue or any of The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, WHY NOT, it's amazing (and most certainly not as well-known as it should be). :)

...

Sigh. Five to seven in the evening and the only productive thing I've managed to do is finally finish editing my Bitterblue fanfiction and blog about it. Great. Not a day wasted at all. :P

I'm way too lazy...

Sleep is my Valentine

I may have a slight hate of Valentine's Day. It's so commercialised. And I don't really see the point. And all the people who are single and don't want to be single have it rubbed in their faces that so many people are happy and in love yet they're still single. Everything everywhere in the run-up to the 14th is all like, "VALENTINE'S DAY!!" and loads of people get all excited over it and then you get to the 14th and then it's like... oh. That's it. That's the day you've been looking forward to/dreading. Gone. And nothing happened. A normal day. Now tell me, WHAT WAS/IS ALL THE FUSS ABOUT????

 I personally would like to ignore it, but unfortunately, it's a little bit hard to ignore.

Also, when I got to school this morning, my friend said to me, "That's a nice jumper, what's it got on it?" and I was like, "A heart." And then I was like, oh shit it's a freaking heart, and it's freaking Valentine's Day. Great planning there, Beth. And I've been slightly annoyed about it all day.  I was a little bit paranoid everyone would notice and be like "Oh that's nice, you're celebrating Valentine's Day by wearing a jumper with a heart on it!" and I would've had to have screamed in their faces, "I'M NOT CELEBRATING VALENTINE'S DAY!" Luckily, I had on a scarf that went in front of the heart, so only the people who I complained about my bad planning to actually noticed. Also, it's a lovely warm jumper, so I wasn't cold aaaaall day. :)

So, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy Beekeeping Day (my friend tells me that Saint Valentine is also, apparently, the patron saint of beekeeping), Happy Pan-Universal Be Who You Are Day and Happy Fourteenth of February! :)

Purely for your own entertainment, here are my [top 10] fictional character Valentines:
1. Brigan from Kristin Cashore's Fire
2. Jacob Reckless from Cornelia Funke's Mirrorworld series (Reckless and Fearless)
3. Sherlock from the BBC series Sherlock 
4. Po from Kristin Cashore's Graceling
5. Sean Kendrick from Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races
6. Sam Roth from Maggie Stiefvater's Mercy Falls Wolves series
7. Four from Veronica Roth's Divergent and Insurgent
8. Mr Rochester from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
9. Chaol Westfall from Sarah J Maas' Throne of Glass
10. Magnus Bane from Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices and The Mortal Instruments series'

I'm not happy that I couldn't fit the following - who are in no order whatsoever other than the order in which I thought of them - onto my list:

• Jem and Will from Cassie Clare's The Infernal Devices
• Jace from The Mortal Instruments,
• Giddon and Raffin (and, by extension of Raffin, Bann, because they're so cute together!) from Kristin Cashore's Graceling and Bitterblue
• Marco from Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus
• Dashiell from Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
• Saf from Ms Cashore's Bitterblue (even though I don't like how snide and rude he is to Bitterblue sometimes, and how he does stupid things from time to time)
• John Watson from BBC Sherlock
• Gale from Susanne Collins' The Hunger Games
• Sirius Black, James Potter and Remus Lupin from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (or at least, the versions of them found in fan fictions... particularly one called Giving Up and Changing Mind based on James and Lily - yes, it may be long, but the story is awesome and I love it)

And many others besides. :)

A side-note: I highly recommend every book (and TV series and fan fiction story) that I have mentioned in this post, especially the authors I have labelled. Warning: reading any of these books (or fanfictions) or watching any of these series' may cause you to find your fictional Valentine. And if you read The Mortal Instruments, you will quite literally find a fictional Valentine. (Thank God he's fictional!)

A short continuation of the post I wrote approximately two minutes ago

Furthermore, I have just read the latest post on Kristin Cashore's blog. The captions are brilliant.

http://kristincashore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/it-is-use-of-increasingly-more.html

Which reminds me, I promised a friend I'd lend her Kristin Cashore's books. We were talking about The Lord Of The Rings, and she said she didn't like fantasy because of all the crazy magic stuff like talking trees. Naturally I was like, "What's wrong with talking trees?!" So I was telling her why I like fantasy, and I told her about Kristin Cashore's awesome books and asked her if she wanted to borrow them off me, she tried to refuse by saying that she prefered romance stories, so I was like, "THERE'S LOADS OF ROMANCE!!!"

Hopefully, Kristin Cashore, you will have another fan. :)

Basically what I'm saying is, read Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue. They are AMAZING and you will see why I keep mentioning them and their author. :)

Character Swap

We did an interesting activity in creative writing club today. We had to describe one of our characters who we knew well to someone else, and then they would have to write a short piece from your character's point of view, and you had to write a short piece from their character's point of view. It was quite difficult, at first, until you got into it.

I'd say that it made you realise how much your characters mean to you, but I was already aware that I was quite protective over my favourite characters and storylines (I feel I should apologise to all my other characters and storylines - just because you are not my favourites does not mean you are not valued, and no offense was intended). I also expected it to be difficult to write from the point of view of someone else's character, so there were no new lessons to be learned there either. However, what I did take away from this is how hard it is to describe your character to someone else and not miss anything out. I doubt my partner's piece shows my character the way I show my character, which is my fault not hers, she is an amazing writer.

Also, I am quite nervous to share what I wrote, although surprisingly I am quite happy with it. I'm just worried that I got her character all wrong and she won't be very happy with me, or that she won't think I wrote it very well (did I mention she's a better writer than me, and probably THE best in our group? Yeah.).

It also made me want to talk more about my novel, mostly to my best friend while we were walking home, which is odd for me, because, as I mentioned earlier, I'm quite protective over my characters and storylines. They're kind of part of me, they're some of those really private things that I daydream about randomly so I don't much like sharing them; you'd expect my best friend to know all about them, but she doesn't, we don't really talk about our writing all that much. When somebody, like my aunt, say, asks me if I'm writing anything at the moment, if I am, I'll generally just say something along the lines of "Um, yeah... I'm writing a fantasy story... about a girl... as usual..." and that'll be it.

Me and my friend did talk a bit about it - I can't remember how much I've said about this novel previously, but this is the friend who suggested the name Barnabus, if I mentioned that - and I told her today the significance of this - that although my novel finally has a proper title, the name Barnabus has stuck, to my main antagonist - and she was pleased, I think, of her contribution. She, I think, may or may not be the first person I have told my new title to. It's called The Secrets The Dead Keep. (By the way, this post isn't necessarily to talk about my novel, it doesn't really have much of a point...) Back in August last year I wrote about 41,000 words in a prologue and not quite twelve chapters (I had a plan set out, but in order to keep myself wanting to write, I skipped one of them; also, I never finished about Chapter Twelve) set over three months, when the whole novel will take place over twelve months. I don't really think there's much more I can say about it, I may or may not have given a (very) brief idea of what the plot is about in a previous post, I can't remember - my memory really isn't great, you may be able to tell :P.

So... maybe I'll post a bit of my novel on here at some point (apart from the random extract I had to remove from my first draft due to a "deliberate" mistake). I'd also like to read a bit of it out at Creative Writing, but I think it'd be best if I read the prologue, unfortunately I'm happy with neither the original prologue I wrote in August, or the one in the rewritten version, so that'll need a bit of work... Anyway. :) I'm sorry this post... wandered a bit, and that it didn't really have much of a point, but I wanted to post it, so there. :) I may be posting again soon if I manage to write part two of When I Turn Forty, if anyone's interested about that, which they're probably not - I've tried writing that story several times, I'm still not convinced the idea is any good when it's on paper instead of in my head (where it is  good), but I'll definitely be posting on the 14th (of February, this year, that is, guys :P). No extra brownie points for guessing the subject. :)

Apologies, changes and an awesome video

I would like to apologise profoundly for not posting the second part of When I Turn Forty yesterday, and I regret to inform you that I will not be posting it at any point this week, quite simply because it hasn't been written. I'm insanely busy (though making time to write this right now appears to be disproving this) with homework at the moment, and joining tumblr was a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad decision, I'm perfectly capable of distracting myself without it, which is really NOT a good thing..

So I'm thinking I'll be busy pretty much from now until my AS exams are over, which I imagine will be in May, or possibly June, I'm not sure... But basically I'm going to throw all stability out of the window and just post what I can when I can. I.e., I know the story-every-Wednesday thing didn't last very long, but I'm scrapping it. So, expect the unexpected! You may have to wait for it till May! In the meantime... watch this awesome video... it's hilarious and you should all subscribe to her... :P

Whenever inspiration strikes, you have to take it... even when it seriously hinders the tidying of your desk...

This is what happens when an empty coffee mug inspires you, and there is a camera nearby... (I apologise in advance for my photography, which I thought was better than it actually is at the time, and for my messy desk)

It started off quite slowly...

And then it escalated...

And then it got out of hand... it ended up being a sort of 3D collage of things I like...

I apologise to Kristin Cashore for putting things on top of her books. They should be worshipped, not sat on by MP3 player speakers. :) (In case nobody has noticed, I would like to point out the little felt mouse sitting on top of the speakers. I don't really have a reason for doing that, except that I realise he isn't very noticeable, and that I think he would like to be noticed.)

And if anyone was wondering, I did manage to get my desk tidied in the end. :)

When I Turn Forty - Part One: a short story

This, I believe, will be a three-part short story, at least. I have had this idea lurking in the back of my mind for some time now, and have tried to write it on a few occasions. Don't expect anything spectacular. :)

It’d been a busy day.

Susanna got up at six o’clock this morning because she couldn’t stay in bed any longer for excitement. She woke her parents and opened her presents, and helped her mother make the cake, and decorated it herself and left her mother to clear up afterwards. She played with her new toys between floods of visiting relatives. Then she helped with lunch, and ate lunch, and put on her party dress and had her hair brushed and decorated with a pretty hairband, and bounced around the house until her friends arrived. Then she bounced around the house with them, and they played with her new toys, and then Susanna’s dad took them all to the cinema, and then bowling, and they ate pizza in the café in the bowling alley. And they talked and laughed and yelled and laughed and played with their balloons and their food and laughed until Susanna’s father thought he would be deaf for the rest of his life.

Now finally, at eight o’clock in the evening, they were alone again. The dark had fallen outside the frosty window, and the father sat in the kitchen washing the pots, staring listlessly into the water, exhausted. The mother sat by the fire in the sitting room reading a novel when her little girl skipped into the room with a picture book and a smile on her face. She pushed her mother’s novel out of the way and clambered up onto her lap, handing her the picture book. Her mother took it, put her arms around the girl and held the book in front of the two of them, but did not open it. She said,

                “Did you enjoy your birthday, Susanna?”

                “Yes, Mummy,” the girl said sweetly, grinning round at her. And then, remembering her manners, she said, “Thank you for my presents.”

                “You’re welcome, sweetie,” her mother said, smiling. “Is it good to be six?”

Susanna nodded eagerly, but the weariness from the day was clear in her contented little face. She patted the book and looked at her mother, who said, thoughtfully,

                “Now that you are six, what is it you would like to be when you are forty?”

                “A fairy!” Susanna cried happily.

                “A fairy,” her mother chuckled. “That’s lovely.”

And then she opened the book and proceeded to read her daughter to sleep.

*

A year passed.

Now here she was again, seven years old, after another busy birthday, and her father was in the kitchen reading his newspaper, and her mother was in the sitting room by the fire knitting. Again Susanna scrambled onto her mother’s knee and handed her a book to read.

                “Mummy, will you read to me?”

                “Of course, sweetie. Have you had a good birthday?”

                “Yes it was very – yes I really, really, really liked it.”

                “Good. What’s it like being seven?”

                “Big,” Susanna replied shortly.

Her mother smiled. “And what would you like it to be like when you’re forty?”

This time Susanna thought about it. “That’s really old,” she said after a minute. Her mother laughed, and tried not to think that she would be forty soon.

                “Not as old as, say, ninety.”

                “That’s really, really, really old!”

                “Yes, but what would you like to be when you’re forty?”

                “I’d like to be a princess.”

                “Really?” She should’ve expected that. “And how would become a princess?”

                “I’d marry a prince,” Susanna said, as if it was obvious. Her mother supposed it would be, to a girl who’d watched so many Disney Princess films.

                “Oh? Which prince?” her mother asked, wondering whether her daughter would say Prince William or Prince Harry.

                “Prince Charming!” Susanna said, and her mother realised that at this age, there were no princes in the world other than Prince Charming, not even the Princes William and Harry. “Can we read now, Mummy?”

                “Yes, dear. Once upon a time…”

*

In the year that followed, a lot happened. Susanna started Junior School, and came home one day to tell her mother shyly that she’d made friends with a boy in her class called Archie and one day they were going to get married and live happily ever after. Yet another day, she came home and told her mother in tears that some of the girls were being mean to her.

When she made friends with these girls, she invited them to her eighth birthday party, along with Archie and a few other friends. As it turned out, these girls only went for the cake. Susanna’s eighth birthday was when she learned that life isn’t perfect.

That evening, she went and curled up on her mother’s lap and put her arms around her and buried her face in her shoulder. She gave her no book to read, not this year. Her mother held her and rocked her as Susanna said,

                “Why do they not like me?”

To which her mother replied, after a minute’s thought, “I don’t know, dear. Some people aren’t very nice. Unfortunately that’s just the way it is.”

                “Why?”

                “Because everybody’s different and that’s just how some people turn out. Not very nice. Besides, not everybody’s parents are very nice. That might make them a not very nice person.”

                “I have nice parents,” Susanna said, and her mother smiled and hugged her only daughter closer.

                “Good,” she said. “We do try to be nice.”

                “I don’t ever want to be not nice like that,” Susanna declared, shaking her head.

                “No, I hope you’re not ever like that. What would you like to be instead?”

                “Nice,” Susanna replied simply. “And friendly and kind.”

                “What about when you’re older? When you’re forty, what would you like to be by the time you’re forty?”

And Susanna said, “Didn’t you ask me that last year?”

                “I did. But things change in a year. Now that you’re a bit older, what would you like to be by the time you’re forty?”

Her daughter stared off at the far wall with a slight crease between her eyebrows. Eventually she said, absently,

                “Princesses aren’t like Cinderella and Snow White anymore, are they? Like, the princesses in magazines and things, they don’t look like princesses, do they, with big ball gowns and tiaras and…things. Do they?”

                “No, my dear, princesses aren’t like the ones in fairytales.”

Susanna wrinkled her nose. “Then I don’t want to be a princess.”

                “What do you want to be, then?” her mother asked her softly.

                “I don’t know,” Susanna admitted.

                “What about… An actress? Or a singer? A musician? A writer? An artist? What about a vet, or a doctor? A teacher? A designer? Maybe an astronaut? A chef? A horse rider? Or an explorer? I know, what about a ballerina?” But as her mother listed each one as she thought of them, Susanna just shook her head.

                “I don’t know, Mummy,” she said. “Well, really, I’d like to be a fairy. Or a dragon trainer.”

                “A ballerina can be similar to a fairy.”

Susanna thought about that, then said quickly, “No. No it’s not, Mummy.”

                “Okay, then.”

And that was the end of that conversation.