The Last Dream: NaNoWriMo 2013

When all else fails, you still have your dreams... don't you?

When you have come to despise the fairy-tale figures that dominated your entire childhood, it's just your luck that the alien invasion that comes to tear your world apart brings the characters that have haunted you for years quite literally to your doorstep - and right after you discovered your sister has been lying to you (again). Seriously, it's just not your day, is it?

I thought I'd share the synopsis and cover art for the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo this year - The Last Dream, originally called The Cloudmaker. The inspiration for it came from driving past a small white building in a field in Scotland somewhere between Edinburgh and the English border which I think was some sort of mini power station (I can't really remember what it looked like so I can't tell you what it was), but it looked to me like it should be a cloud factory. I was annoyed at myself for wanting to write about this cloud maker for NaNoWriMo, because I'd wanted to write a novel about a fangirl this year. And then I had a weird dream which involved an alien invasion, and I'd wanted to do my NaNoWriMo novel about that too. So, I combined the three together, and this is the result. :)

Will be the result. Will be the result, when it's done. (I'm currently about 2,000 words behind but there we go).

The book cover is a pretty picture of some clouds that I found on Google Images, and I used the programme Paint and the font Shelley Volante BT (the Nightwish font) for the text.

Also, I am putting the link to my NaNoWriMo profile in the list of links down on the left of the home page. Visit it if you wish. :)

TO READ: Fire

Fire by Kristin Cashore is the second in her The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, however not only is it technically a prequel to first in the series Graceling but it isn't actually set in the Seven Kingdoms at all. In a land bordering the Seven Kingdoms to the east of an impassable mountain range known as The Dells, approximately forty years before the events of Graceling. This is, I think, my favourite book. My one favourite, ever. (And such a pretty cover the British edition has!!)

In The Dells - one of only two kingdoms known to its people, the other being the northern sea-faring land of Pikkia - there exists extraordinary creatures which can appear as any species, be it cat, mouse, wolf, raptor... These monsters, as they are called, can be distinguished by their unnaturally vibrant colours, and have the ability to take control of others' minds, which is added to the almost hypnotic effect their beauty has on some.

Seventeen-year-old Fire (so named for her flaming hair) is the only human monster alive, and is hated by many - sometimes for jealousy, sometimes for her father's legacy, but mostly for her venomous mind. Fire hides herself away on her late father's estate in a remote corner of the kingdom, where her kind-hearted neighbour raised her along with his son Archer, Fire's lifelong friend, in the hopes of deflecting all attention. But Fire isn't safe, not even here.

The Dells is a kingdom still recovering from a king corrupted by Fire's monster father Cansrel, and the throne of the current King Nash is unstable, and the threat of war is looming from all sides. Despite the royal family's obvious distrust of her, Fire's gift would be invaluable, and Fire is not her father. This is the story of Fire's fight to prove herself; to stay true to herself and to do what she feels is right and pay back the innocent prince Cansrel tried so many times to kill. Because underneath her otherworldly beauty, Fire is just as human as everybody else.

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone and everyone reads this book - whether you're male or female, old or young. Partly because of a blog post I just found. I was going to comment on it, but then it became a bit long so I shall be posting it separately. But whether you'd rather read something fast-paced, or something political, or something romantic, or something magical, READ THIS BOOK.

Finally, I'd like to just direct people to a blog post that Kristin Cashore wrote about Fire and why she wrote it. Also, please find the list of awards and raving reviews for Fire here. :)

TO READ: Graceling

And at last, I've got to recommending what is probably my favourite series of books: The Seven Kingdoms trilogy by the wonderful Kristin Cashore (whose blog is here). Graceling is the first in the trilogy to have been published, and is Cashore's debut novel, although in the story's timeline it is not the first chronologically.

Graceling is set in a fictional Medieval-esque world made up of seven kingdoms: Nander, Estill, Sunder, Wester, Monsea, Lienid, and the Middluns. In this world, some people - called Gracelings - are born with extra-special abilities and are marked by having one eye a different colour to the other.

One such Graceling is Katsa, the niece of the king of the Middluns, who is Graced with killing, and is used by her uncle as a weapon to fuel his fearsome reputation. Sickened by the gruesome tasks she is forced to do, Katsa also works for a secret organisation called the Council, which she started herself, to do good and help people in order to balance out all those she has hurt and killed.

It is on a Council mission to rescue the kidnapped father of the peaceful king of Lienid that Katsa stumbles onto a dark mystery that will lead her on a journey of survival and self-discovery across the Seven Kingdoms in the hopes of putting right a world gone wrong.

Winner of several awards and nominated for many more, Graceling is a gripping and fast-paced coming-of-age novel for young adults, beautifully written with a touch of romance and humour, as well as believable characters who I myself have become incredibly emotionally attached to over at least five readings of this book. It's also due to be adapted for the big screen, by the makers of Life Of Pi; it's a film I'm very much looking forward to, I just hope they do it the justice it deserves.

Also, while browsing Kristin Cashore's blog for the link to the post in which the film was announced, I found this awesome post (if you read it, remember to read some of the comments too, as Cashore comments to answer peoples' questions with more wonderful insights). I swear it's the most inspirational post for writers EVER. Another of my favourites is this one; Kristin Cashore has some of the most brilliant advice for writers, I could actually spend all day finding links to posts from her blog that would be helpful to anyone aspiring to be a novelist (she is seriously inspirational).

Secrets: a short story

I haven't told anyone I know that I've started a blog, so I figured I'd write you all something about secrets. Also I couldn't find anything on my computer that I've written that's short, finished, and satisfactory. One day I'll post what I wrote in creative writing club on Monday, as I said I might yesterday, but today is not that day. I'm quite scared of posting my first short story or piece of writing or whatever, to be honest, mostly I'm nervous that anything I post will be really, really terrible... so if you can't say anything nice, then please don't say anything at all. I'll get the message. :)

This is off the top of my head so I apologise in advance for its shortness and possibly how rubbish it is, depending on how this goes. But in the meantime I've posted some stuff of my FanFiction and FictionPress profiles, the links to which are on the sidebar-y thingy on the left. This story includes characters from a longer story that lives only partly in writing and mostly in my head, and this is not something that takes place at the beginning, but that doesn't really matter for the moment. :) So, please enjoy! Feel free to comment if you have any... erm... comments... but please don't be too mean because that won't help anything at all. :)

 The walls were beginning to close in around her, a sea of white paint drowning her under its waves. She had been here weeks now. It was not a small room, most certainly, but that did not stop the feeling that it was a cell - for that, she supposed, was what it really was. A glorified prison cell. The paintings and the clean bathroom and the comfortable bed couldn't fool her, not when she was trapped without a single window.
 It was driving her crazy. But maybe that was what they wanted.
 No. She knew what they wanted.
 Secrets. They thought, why would she tell us things if we locked her in a damp cell and didn't feed her? But their kindness only made her suspicious. She had known what they wanted right from the start. Why steal the king's daughter and hold her at ransom when they could get more for the king's best advisor? Besides, her family wouldn't have left her this long. They would have paid. Her father, her brother, her sister-in-law, Cody... No. They couldn't know where she was, not if she was still here.
 She rubbed at her wrist, the skin paper-thin. She could see her veins. Her veins told stories, but only to her. There had never been a time she was more glad of that. If anyone else heard the stories her veins had to tell, they would hear secrets that weren't hers to tell. Her father's secrets. Her brother's secrets. Her friends' secrets. The court's secrets.
 The fact that others couldn't hear the stories her veins told was the only thing that kept them from knowing she had been feeding them false information all this time.
 She might have been the most trustworthy person she knew, but oddly she was finding that she was a very good liar.