Monthly Archives: January 2012

I’m a school marm

Well, I’m a home-schooler. People tend to assume that obviously this means I am a Christian fundamentalist who only allows my children out in public if they’re wearing virgin-white smocks that cover them from wrist to ankle. These people do not know me. *evilgrin*

 

But what I actually wanted to talk about is how being home can be really boring sometimes. There are days when school seems as much a chore for me as it is for the Spawn. Luckily these days are few and far between, and when they do happen, we can take reading-days and activity days and bake-many-many-cakes days and let’s-go-out-and-have-lunch days. Best of all, none of those days make me feel bad as a parent-teacher. My kids are still learning stuff, in sometimes not so obvious ways.

 

Writing’s a bit like that too. Mostly I can manage to thunk down a few words a day or edit a few pages and make some kind of progress, but those days when I stay in bed reading, or make cupcakes with my kids – they’re still writing days, you just have to change your mind-set.

 

What we’ve done in school this week:

 

Baked carrot cake. What better way to prove to spawn that carrots are not evil?

 

 

 

 

DIYed some paint out of grocery cupboard standbys and glitter.

 

 

This one’s for me. When it’s not school I get lazy with tea times, but when I get back into the swing of the things I love doing this – we have picnics at tea time.

 

 

 

And finally, today is such a gorgeous day. My garden is looking bedraggled because I basically live on a sand dune, so the grass needs love, but ignore that and enjoy the summery love. I think The Slave and I are going to head out for drinks after our mountain drive.

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Wheeee no time left in my universe!

The Spawn and I have started school.

 

This time both Younger and Elder Sprog are at school, and it’s a little intimidating teaching two very different age groups. The first day was pretty much the definition of awful. When The Slave came home I was despairing that I’d be able to cope with teaching both of them, and so he got to deal with a very Sad and Grumpy Cat.

 

Today was so much better. Obviously we had to shake the last of the holiday slacker vibes from our skins. One of the coolest things about staying home with them is hearing the weird and occasionally funny shit they come up with.

 

The Younger Sprog is not under any pressure to go to school because she’s Grade Naught, so we have a very flexible set-up where she plays as much as she wants, and she does “school” when she feels ready for it. This is way more often than you would think, by the way. This afternoon she came to me in the lounge and very seriously says, “Can we do school now – I need to take a break from playing.” Hah. Not quite the order you expect to hear those words in.

 

As for writing, well, let me get back into the school day rhythm before I make any commitments. I have the feeling that I’ll actually end up being more productive than I was over December. We can only hope. What a waste of time that was…

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Exercising my reading brain

I’m around, just that nothing terribly exciting has happened worth blogging about. I’m using the time to catch up on a number of books I wanted to read. Lots of thoughts clashing around in my brain about Young Adult and what it means when people mindlessly adhere to certain tropes associated with the genre.

 

That and about expecting more from YA and not allowing it to sit there all bloated and cannibalistic, like a tick sucking from a tick.

 

But, yeah.

 

Mostly I’m just reading.

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A spotlight on a review in a box

Or maybe just a spotlight, a review, and a box.

I have this broken old reading lamp that was a shade of blue that just doesn’t work in my house. So I’m turning it into a white flower, because I love kitsch shit, basically. Here’s step one:

Lamp outside, waiting for me to spray paint like a spray painting thing:

Now white and with new bulbs, and waiting for me to get myself in gear to finish what I started:

(yeah, I haven’t spray-painted much before. As you can tell. Hopefully my next adventure with an aerosol can is less…streaky. heh. Now to buy many many fake flowers and glue gun the shit out of this.)

OKAY then I promised you a review. *ahem*

Publisher’s Weekly review When the Sea is Rising Red and say nice things. I am stoked!

 

Debut author Hellisen’s style features evocative descriptions and unflinching detail, drawing readers into the unusual and intriguing elements that make up Felicita’s socially complex world.

 

And a box. I made it. It’s adorbs.

I kinda want to make some more with hand-made paper for things for book launching, but we’ll see how I feel in a month’s time. (Hi, I’m lazy, pleased to meet you!)

 

 

 

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When the Sea is Rising Red

After seventeen-year-old Felicita’s dearest friend Ilven kills herself to escape an arranged marriage, Felicita chooses freedom over privilege. She fakes her own death and leaves her sheltered life as one of Pelimburg’s magical elite behind. Living in the slums, scrubbing dishes for a living, she falls for charismatic Dash while also becoming fascinated with vampire Jannik. Then something shocking washes up on the beach: Ilven’s death has called out of the sea a dangerous wild magic. Felicita must decide whether her loyalties lie with the family she abandoned . . . or with those who would twist this dark power to destroy Pelimburg’s caste system, and the whole city along with it.

 

“Dark, perilous, haunted. Death surrounds this courageous female hero.  I couldn’t stop reading, not when I had to know more so badly!” –Tamora Pierce, New York Times–bestselling author of the Beka Cooper trilogy

When the Sea is Rising Red is a moody, atmospheric tale characterized by a creeping sense of dread that makes for a compelling read.” – Jacqueline Carey, New York Times–bestselling author of the Kushiel’s Legacy series

“In this smart, subtle fantasy reminiscent of Charles de Lint or Emma Bull, dreamy prose and exquisite world-building move the reader toward a powerful and fitting conclusion.” —Rae Carson, author of The Girl of Fire and Thorns

“Rich in atmosphere and romance, When the Sea is Rising Red is a compelling tale of magic, friendship, and rebellion. A stunning debut!” —Suzanne Young, author of A Need So Beautiful

Available from:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Book Depository

Takealot

Kalahari

 

Or support your local indie! My favourites in Cape Town are The Book Lounge and Kalk Bay Books

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BULLSEYE

It’s not exactly a crafting post but it has a colourful splodge in the middle (that’s the climax, btw, heh.) so I figure it’s good enough. This here is my new attempt at Getting Plot Right. Shut up, I’ve just started on that beauty, kids. It should get more complicated.

 

The random bird is not part of the plot, but thinking on it now, it probably should be. *adds it in*

I also changed the opening again. Because I have a problem. And I know it.

 

So the current start is this, and as usual subject to immense change:

 

We were leaving everything, but at least we were still human, still sane. None of us had died yet, not like Father, who had become a falling angel, his biomagic-wings burning up like the tails of twin comets.
Or perhaps that’s just how the newsmachine wanted us to imagine his glorious end. I think it was more like this; like pulling away from my life on a train I didn’t want to be on, too scared to show how scared I was, with the blanket of the future clamped down on me – thick and wet and soaked in ethanol. I wondered if he felt that same small cramping deep in his body, just under his lungs, the way I did as the station was swallowed into murky fog, and the train rattled and heaved.

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Pizza!

Because pizza(!) always deserves an exclamation.

 

The Elder Sprog has been nine for a while and we figured it was about time she learned to make a few meals more advanced than cereal. My evil plan is to train her up so that I can do nothing but turn into a kind of Jabba the Hutt thing that is surgically attached to my laptop, while The Spawn feed me pizza(!) and coffee. Okay not really. I like to be able to walk to the bathroom unassisted, at the very least.

 

I put forward the idea to the Elder Sprog that Wednesdays will be a day to learn to cook something, and did she have any preferences for her first go at chefdom? I will give you three guesses as to what she chose. Also, none of those guesses count.

 

Today I taught the Elder Sprog to make pizza(!) dough, and then showed both spawn how to do the toppings. Then they kicked me and The Slave out of the kitchen, and told us they were making us pizza(!) for supper.They took requests for toppings, squealed happily and worked together to produce their very first all-by-themselves pizzas(!)

 

It was the most wonderful pizza(!) in the world. And I love my strange little people who made it.

 

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Flying ponies and Shiny New Books.

Tanith and I made flying ponies for the passage wall. The plan is to make new ones whenever we have nothing else to do. If I took anything from this it’s that I need to be more like a four-year-old and use ALL THE COLOURS.

 

 

Today is a huge day for the Apocalypsies with three YA releases to kick off the year.

 

Marissa Meyer’s Cinder:

“Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . .

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

In this thrilling debut young adult novel, the first of a quartet, Marissa Meyer introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine and a masterfully crafted new world that’s enthralling.”

Cracked by K. M. Walton:

“Sometimes there’s no easy way out.

Victor hates his life. He has no friends, gets beaten up at school, and his parents are always criticizing him. Tired of feeling miserable, Victor takes a bottle of his mother’s sleeping pills—only to wake up in the hospital.

Bull is angry, and takes all of his rage out on Victor. That makes him feel better, at least a little. But it doesn’t stop Bull’s grandfather from getting drunk and hitting him. So Bull tries to defend himself with a loaded gun.

When Victor and Bull end up as roommates in the same psych ward, there’s no way to escape each other or their problems. Which means things are going to get worse—much worse—before they get better…”

 

and Veronica Rossi’s Under The Never Sky (LOVE that title!)

Aria is a teenager in the enclosed city of Reverie. Like all Dwellers, she spends her time with friends in virtual environments, called Realms, accessed through an eyepiece called a Smarteye. Aria enjoys the Realms and the easy life in Reverie. When she is forced out of the pod for a crime she did not commit, she believes her death is imminent. The outside world is known as The Death Shop, with danger in every direction.

As an Outsider, Perry has always known hunger, vicious predators, and violent energy storms from the swirling electrified atmosphere called the Aether. A bit of an outcast even among his hunting tribe, Perry withstands these daily tests with his exceptional abilities, as he is gifted with powerful senses that enable him to scent danger, food and even human emotions.

They come together reluctantly, for Aria must depend on Perry, whom she considers abarbarian, to help her get back to Reverie, while Perry needs Aria to help unravel the mystery of his beloved nephew’s abduction by the Dwellers. Together they embark on a journey challenged as much by their prejudices as by encounters with cannibals and wolves. But to their surprise, Aria and Perry forge an unlikely love – one that will forever change the fate of all who live UNDER THE NEVER SKY

The first book in a captivating trilogy, Veronica Rossi’s enthralling debut sweeps you into an unforgettable adventure.”

 

Have a wonderful release day, guys!


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2012 day 2 – cupcakes

Last year was a bit of a slack year – partly because I tried focusing all my energy on writing and ended up suffering the most massive horrible burnout I have ever experienced. I still don’t want to think about writing, but at least now when I do I can say to myself, “Don’t go there,” rather than have a panic attack.

 

Yeah.

 

The focus is going to shift a little – I’m going to record my creativity so that at the end of the year I can look back and say wow okay, I did stuff, I made things. This was a good year.

 

Whatever I make doesn’t have to be anything amazing and difficult, it just has to bring me some kind of joy.

 

Today was cupcakes, the sprinkles added by The Spawn.

 

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2012 Debut Author Challenge

Okay gotta get in on this one. It’s an excuse to buy new books instead of trawling the 2nd-hand bookstore.

The original idea is over here – The Story Siren and the objective – “To read & review a minimum of twelve young adult or middle grade debut novels between the dates of January 1, 2012 – January 31, 2013.”

 

I think 12 is a good number for me, one YA a month will hit the spot. I’ll pick one from every month’s debuts.

 

So, here’s my list, although titles may change depending on availability

 

Jan:  The Alchemy of Forever -Avery Williams

Feb: Born Wicked – Jessica Spotswood

March: Croak – Gina Damico

April: Kiss the Morning Star – Elissa Janine Hoole

May:  The Nightmare Factory – Lucy Jones

June: The Shadows Cast by Stars – Catherine Knutsson

July: Something Strange and Deadly – Susan Dennard

August: Auracle – Gina Rosati

Sept: Touching the Surface – Kimberly Sabatini

Oct: Venom – Fiona Paul

Nov: Through to You – Emily Hainsworth

Dec: Pivot Point – Kasie West

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