I'm Bringing It Back

I realized a great injustice today. Well, I had realized this injustice for many days, but today I will act upon it.

For too long, the world has forgotten the AWESOME mini-series, The 10th Kingdom.

This mini series was, in a word, fantastic. More than fantastic. The characters were ohmygosh lovable and the storyline was PAINFULLY unique and so, so awesome I still get angry that I didn't think of it myself. The setting -- BEAUTIFUL. The costumes -- envy-inducing. And yet, it just kind of faded into movie oblivion.

So, so wrong.

Thus, I am rebirthing The 10th Kingdom. If you haven't seen, hopefully this blog post will convince you that you should run out to your nearest, um, amazon.com and order it. Because it is just that good, folks. We're talking Level 6 type good.

So here is my list of reasons why The 10th Kingdom is the best unknown mini-series movie thing ever. Yes, I set the bar quite high.

Reason #1) The people who made this movie are HYSTERICAL. They are brilliant actors who brought the characters to life so well I have trouble seeing them in other roles. Scott Cohen is just and will always be WOLF, no matter who he plays.



Reason #2) Everything sings. Rings sing. Mushrooms sing. Trolls sing. Rings sing. Did I mention the singing ring? (No, I couldn't find a clip. You'll have to watch it to see for yourself!)

Reason #3) Every fairy tale you could want is referenced. Jack and the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red, The Emperor's New Clothes, Rapunzel, and on and on.

Reason #4) Adventure. Lots, and lots, and lots of adventure. And not just any adventure. Like escaping insane farming villages. Dodging evil swamp witches. Breaking out of high-security fairy tale prisons. Running from psycho-killing huntsmen. Breaking gypsy curses. De-riddling frogs. Yeah. I thought you'd be interested.

Reason #5) Lots of really obscure meat references. Hey, Wolf is, after all, a wolf.

Reason #6) Romance. Wolf and Virginia. Virginia and Wolf. Just...sigh.



More reasons, in clumped-together-paragraph form:

Talking dogs, evil stepmothers, magic traveling mirrors, magic TALKING mirrors, dwarves, caves, waterfalls, love towns, modern-day songs in fairytale setting, magic wishing wells, village idiots, yummy food, pretty castles, fairies, sheep, and magic beans.

Now go here. You'll thank me later.

Everything I Learned About Life I Learned from Working in Retail: Fact #3

Fact #3:

If you work in a busy retail store, a LOT of people can come through your doors each day. Most of these customers pass through your store without leaving much of an impact. They buy stuff, they leave. Then there are some who just don't leave soon enough (the ones that cause you to scream in your head: OHMYGOD do you even care that your son is tearing apart the shoe display?! DEMON CHILDREN!). Then there are the "golden customers." The ones who go out of their way to be courteous, who only make you get down exactly what they need from the very tippy-top shelf. The ones who sympathize with you about the insane little boy who is now running laps around the store, dressed head to toe in unbought merchandise, while their own children stand quietly by their side, well-behaved and mannered. These are the customers you bond with. These are the customers you eventually come to greet by name. These are the customers that make an entire day of DEMON CHILDREN a little bit brighter.

Translated:

People come and people go. Acquaintances flit through our lives more numerous than we can quite count. But every so often, people stick. Some we REALLY wish wouldn't stick (I don't feel I can give an example of this without insulting any one group of people, but I'm sure you have your own image of who I'm talking about), and others we're REALLY glad did stick. The ones we're glad did stick are the ones who make days filled with stress and just all around nastiness a little bit brighter. They're the ones we look forward to seeing or talking with, the ones who go out of their way to make sure we're doing swell. They're our "golden friends." Yes, I did just coin that phrase. And yes, it is extremely corny.

PS: I'm about two months late in realizing this, but look! Over on Elana Johnson's blog, I'm in her list of her favorite blogs! Yay, people like me!

PPS: I keep forgetting to remind yourselves about my super fun Halloween Candy Contest. That bag is getting awfully low, folks. Place your bets now!

Everything I Learned About Life I Learned from Working in Retail: Fact #2

Fact #2:

Just when you get the store looking good (everything in its place, floor swept, shelves stocked), a truck comes. And not just any truck. A truck with at least 90, 100 boxes on it, and that store that looked so good before is now crowded with a mountain of cardboard. It's daunting, to say the least. 100 boxes of items to be displayed, clothes to be hung and put away, shirts to be folded (ug), and shoes to be stocked. And customers are still pouring in, ignorant of the mountainous pile of STUFF at the back of the store. A newb to the retail industry would completely freak-out-panic and hide in the bathroom until his/her shift ended. But you? No, you are much wiser than that. You know that that mountainous pile of STUFF is really just one box after one box after one box. And you know that if you take that mountainous pile of STUFF one box at a time, you will get through it. Maybe not that day, maybe not the next, but it will eventually go back to being a cleanly swept floor in a neat and tidy store.

Translated:

Life can pile up, and pile up FAST. What was once manageable and totally smile-inducing can quickly become OHMYGODMAKEITSTOP. And it is easy, oh so easy, to let it pile up around you until you have to hide somewhere to hyperventilate in peace. But hyperventilating won't fix the problem; trying to tackle everything at once isn't the answer. Just step back, take a deep breath, and choose one box to start on. Take care of that one box. Move on to one more box. Take care of that box. And so on and so forth, until you come to find the not only is your life a lot less OHMYGODMAKEITSTOP, but you are back to living a smile-inducing existence.

And if that doesn't fill you with life-will-be-better goodness, just pretend you work with these people. That should make your life's amount of awesome increase by like tenfold.

Everything I Learned About Life I Learned from Working in Retail: Fact #1

Fact #1:

No matter how many times you fold a stack of shirts on a table, five minutes later, a customer will always, always, ALWAYS come by and mess it up. Sometimes not even with the intent to buy a shirt; quite frequently, shirt-destroyers attack with nothing but ill-intent and the need to destroy order. But you, noble store employee, must refold that stack of shirts you have so diligently folded at least half a dozen times that day. Why? It is your job to keep the store looking neat and tidy, no matter how ungrateful the customers may be.

Translated:

Sometimes we do stuff that doesn't seem to have meaning. No one notices we do these things, no one ever thanks us, and quite often people step all over the fact that we've spent the past hour (or day, or week, etc) doing something for them. But quite often it is beyond our control to make people realize these things. Quite often, all we can do is continue folding our proverbial shirt stack, knowing that we make life a little nicer, even if no one else notices and it all gets ruined five minutes later. The point is: it was there for a moment in time, and for a moment in time, you made the world a little bit brighter.

Liiiiiiinks and Stuff

Hi, my name is Sara, and I'm going to fail my psychology test tomorrow. Just thought you should be the firsts to know. I mean, it's not like I didn't bother to check if we had an upcoming test until Tuesday, found out it was on Thursday, put off studying until 10 o'clock tonight, and now feel the need to complain to anyone who will listen that tests are the bane of my existence. No, I didn't do any of that. I'm a good student.

*cough* Sorry, I'm allergic to my own BSing.

But it's PSYCHOLOGY, people. I've taken this exact class before, almost a year and a half ago, but my shiny new college didn't transfer the credit over, or something, and now I'm taking it AGAIN and pounding my head into my textbook because it was mind-numbing enough the first time 'round. Same class, boring at two completely different schools. Who knew?

complaincomplaincomplaincomplain

Moving on.

Me has links to share:

Firstly, Frankie is doing a contest over on her blog. You should enter. She's giving away books, people. Free books. Yeah, I thought you'd be interested.

Secondly, to waste time, click here. I spent a good half hour not studying because of this website. Have at it.

Thirdly, um...okay, I swear there was at least one other link I wanted to share. PSYCHOLOGY IS FRYING MY BRAIN. Aaaarrrrrrggggghhhh

College rant:

When am I ever going to use the information about how an eye works? Or about sensory perceptions? Hm? When will I ever NEED to know who Hubel and Wiesel were? Yes, it's good to be "well rounded," but seriously now, folks. I feel rounded. Quite rounded. I think the amount of freshman classes (which, by the way, is a total LIE -- I'm taking "freshman" classes as a JUNIOR. Liars! Infidels! Traitors!) is a bit astronomical. Tone it down a bit, or, better yet, ACCEPT ALL CREDITS FROM ALL COLLEGES/UNIVERSITIES EVERYWHERE.

BAH.

Rant over.

Back to studying.

BAH again.

Oh yeah, I'm having a contest too, aren't I? You should enter now. All this test stress may be the end of that bag o' candy.

Wow, you look SO familiar...

14,700 words into the sequel to Stream Pirate! I finally got to a part that I have been DYING to get to since I started writing this book: the introduction of some super-fun, super-dangerous, super-AWESOME new characters. Seriously, guys, these characters are the type that make me all giggly late at night just thinking about their snarkiness. I find myself day-dreaming about the funny things they'll say next and the wicked places they'll go. I'm in love.

But alas, as I was day-dreaming last night (er, night-dreaming? But I was awake...) I realized something that made me rather sad for a moment. One of my beloved new characters is very similar in speech and role to Tia Dalma from Pirates of the Caribbean. This has happened a few other times before (not a character similar to Tia Dalma, just a character similar to an already-created character), and it always leaves me feeling rather -- unoriginal.

My fear is that someone reading my book will draw the connection. In drawing the connection, they will then throw the book down and groan about how utterly incapable I am of making my own characters, so incapable that I have to go stealing other people's characters. And me, being only the author, won't be there to go "But-- I didn't mean to! She's not Tia Dalma! Look, look, she doesn't-- I mean, she wouldn't say--"

Not that my bullet-proof argument would convince them otherwise, but still.

I guess my question is: do you worry about this too? Do you fear getting attached to a character only to find out that your character is really similar to another, already-made character? Or do you think it's not an issue worth worrying over?

PS: The ever-awesome Frankie linked me over to The First Novels Club, where it appears as though they find me "alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive, and inspiring." Aw, shucks, guys, I'm blushing...

The Great YA Debate

My fantabulous Agent Kate posted a link to an article on her blog. The article, in short, is yet another rip on the YA fiction industry and all its domains, this time focusing on the "uselessness" of conferences (er, well, starting with the uselessness of conferences and digressing into other things...). Agent Kate also posted her response to the article which was, as expected, dead-on. This, coupled with something else that happened yesterday, got me thinking.

Whilst I was being all archaeological yesterday, the inevitable question came up: "Why are you studying archaeology?" I have a lot of answers to this question.

A) "It's my 6th major. Seemed like a good switch at the time."
B) "The movie Timeline."
C) "I want to find Atlantis."
D) "I need a degree, apparently. Something about getting a job, surviving, food, blah blah blah."

This time, I responded to said question with a combination of A and D. The question-asker, who was an archaeology/science guy who had been in the science side of things for most of his life, asked what I want to do with my degree. I said "Get a job so I can write."

As soon as I said those words, I cringed.

I've learned not to tell people (namely acquiantances) I write. They ask all kinds of questions that I can't answer "properly", and by the end of the conversation, they think I'm crazy and I'm exasperated with them for thinking my life's work is crazy. But yesterday I was tired, sun-soaked, and sweaty, and the answer just kind of popped out of me.

Then came the questions.

Science people: "What do you write?"
Me: "YA fiction."
Science: "YA fiction? What's that?"
Me: *thinks really hard for something a group of science people might have heard of* "Um...like Twilight and Harry Potter."
Science: "What's Twilight?"
Me: *picks up jaw before realizing another reason I love science people* "Some vampire book." *briefly explains Twilight*
Science: "Oh, so you're going to write a book and get rich?"
Me: "Um...no. Not exactly. That's REALLY rare. Like an actor making it big on his first audition."
Science: "So what book are you working on?"
Me: "YA fantasy, based on geology." *thinking they will at least appreciate the humor of my cleverness* "It's about the term 'stream piracy.' Heard it in a class once. Thought it would be funny if there were actually pirates...who, um...who stole..." *voice fades as looks of woa-she's-lost-it grow*
Science: "Stream piracy? Well, um, if you can write about that, you can write about anything."
Me: "Yeah."
Science: "So you're not going to get rich writing books?"
Me: "Um, not counting on it. That doesn't really happen a lot." *makes the mistake of giving examples of people who have gotten astronomical advances* *quickly amends for it by saying that most authors get small advances, then tries to explain how the system works* *stutters explanation because I'm so nervous under their growing confusion* *ends up throwing out some half-baked explanation and closing the subject by asking about an archaeological device*

That's just an example of the types of conversations I've had with many, many people (this was, in fact, one of the much nicer ones I've had). But while I was reading the article posted by Agent Kate, I couldn't help but feel even more exasperated that there are still people out there with such skewed opinions of YA fiction. It's to be expected; for everything, there will always be people who are uninformed about it. I guess I'd just hoped that after the surge of popularity among YA fiction in recent years, there would be slightly more informed people.

Part of it could be due to the fact that I am just really bad at explaining things verbally (speech class = WORST CLASS OF MY LIFE) to those who ask about writing. Part of it could be my incredible lack of patience when it comes to explaining things. But there are certain stereotypes and certain questions that have been proven wrong through the popularity of YA books. For instance, as mentioned in the article, the lack of "sacrifical goodness" in YA fiction. Two words: Harry Potter. Yes, it was about "witchcraft" and we all know witchcraft is the spawn of Satan and just reading about it will ensure our ticket to hell, but every single one of those 7 books had at least one HUGE scene of sacrifical goodness. And good heavens, people; *SPOILER -- though, really? You don't know how this book ends already?* the culmination of the entire series had a Jesus-like ending. *END SPOILER* What's equally interesting is that the author of the article, Duin, considers Harry Potter to be in a separate category in "YA fiction":

"Few are retold classics or heroic tales like "Lord of the Rings" or homespun adventures like "Little House on the Prairie." Very few speak in moral terms in what David calls the neoclassic tradition of the Harry Potter books or Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Despite the latter's crude anti-Christian propaganda, Mr. Mills wrote, the trilogy does include moving scenes of sacrificial goodness."

Since when is HP not considered to be in the same group as all the rest modern YA fiction? It does stand out for a number of reasons, but if you're going to pick and pull out all the "good books" from the "bad books" then point at the "bad books" and say "WHY AREN'T YOU GOOD??" well...that's a little silly. HP is YA fiction, and YA fiction should be given credit for it.

There's so much more I could go into; that article offers up WAY too much fodder for harping on ignorant folk. But, basically, I'm quite tired of the ignorant put-downs, the snide remarks, and the blank stares of "You want to do WHAT with your life?" I'm tired of having to explain to people that no, I won't get rich like Stephenie Meyer. No, the likelihood of my book turning into a movie is very, very slim. No, my book won't be coming out this year; it'll be awhile longer. Why? Because that's just the pace of the industry.

Let's make a vow. A vow to put to right all the misconceptions of our industry, all the issues that raise eyebrows, all the things that make people snort and roll their eyes and say things like "This is so lacking in moral lessons." Yes, there will always be people with sticks up their asses who will, no matter what, harp on us. But those acquaintances we meet who ask the strands of disheartening questions? Them we can enlighten. So even though I royally suck at verbal communication, I hereby vow to be more patient with those who know nothing of our industry. I hereby vow to take the time to set to right their misperceptions, their questions, their concerns. I hereby vow to tell everyone that I am first and foremost a YA fiction writer, and while it isn't the usual measure of success, it is the measure by which I gauge my happiness, and that's enough for me.

(PS: don't forget to enter my Halloween Candy Contest! You like candy, yes? I thought so.)