It’s pretty obvious that in 2010 I was a serious blog slacker. My slackage was due in part to simply being busy, between the move, the new city and the day job. The other part was that I just didn’t know what to post. True to its name, this blog has been a through a couple of iterations, wandering from one topic to the next – kinda like me. Over the last year I started to feel like maybe I was “blogging wrong;” that my blog needed to have a defined topic with defined and targeted content. I’d fallen for the idea that the point of blogging was to cultivate a readership and to develop a brand. The problem is, I don’t just have one thing that I love over all others. I don’t have a brand. I’m just me, with all my various interests and competing passions.
While I might not have been blogging much over the last year, I have been doing quite a bit of reading (and lurking) in the blogosphere, and I’ve come to realize that there’s no right way to blog. There is a wrong way – to try to be something you’re not. Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m bringing this blog back to its roots, and I’ll be writing about anything and everything that appeals to me. From this moment on, this is a blog about photography, books, writing, pop culture, cool technology, Seattle and life in general. Oh, and anything else I might come up with. At times it may lean more toward one topic than another (I’m working to finish a novel, so there will probably be quite a few posts about that), but I’m not going to limit myself anymore. Crazy no-plan blogging, here we go!
As for personal branding, I kinda like Maureen Johnson’s take on the topic. If, like me, you’re struggling with all the new “instructions” on how to be a person on the internet, you should check out her manifesto.
Thanks to all you authentic bloggers out there for helping me find my way back.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love the modern incarnation with kids in costumes, trick-or-treating and jack-o-lanterns, but I also love the history of the holiday, the idea of thinning of the veil between the world of the living and the dead, and the centuries-old honoring of the balance between death and life. Here are a few of my favorite Halloween-related books:
This is my all-time favorite Halloween classic. I re-read it almost every year.
From the jacket copy:
“join the sinister Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud as he takes eight trick-or-treaters on an unforgettable journey to find their missing friend, Pip. Travel through space and time, from the tombs of ancient Egypt to the gargoyles of Notre Dame cathedral, all the way to the cemeteries of Mexico on El Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead! Is Pip still alive? And if so, can hid friends save him before it’s too late…”
Title:Bunnicula, A Rabbit Tale of Mystery Author: Deborah and James Howe Genre: Paranormal, Kids 8-12 Publisher: Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing
Bunnicula is the first in a series about a pet rabbit that is suspected of sucking the life out of vegetables. At least that’s what the series’ narrator, Harold the family dog, believes. Harold, the puppy Howie, and the smarter-than-dogs cat Chester, are completely convinced of Bunnicula’s vampiric ways, and have all kinds of adventures with the cute little veggie-sucking bunny. The illustrations by Alan Daniel are fantastic and really add to the feel of the book.
This series was a favorite of mine growing up, and isn’t any less fun now that I’m an adult. I especially love the notes from Howard’s editor, the relationship between Howard and Chester, and, of course, Bunnicula himself.
This isn’t your stereotypical Halloween tale. Grace Quintero is a girl who died too soon. Now she’s stuck in between worlds, and she can pass back into the living world only one night a year – Halloween.
From the jacket copy:
“Grace works at Sanchez Motor Works, customizing hot rods. A few blocks around her small apartment building is all her world – from the grocery store where she buys beans, tamales, and cigarettes to the library, the little record shop, and the Solona Music Hall. Which is where she meets John Burns, two weeks too late.”
So those are my faves. What are you reading this Halloween?
Evie is 16 and can identify paranormal beings on sight – she can see through their glamors to the creature underneath. She’s working for the IPCA, the International Paranormal Containment Agency, who found her as a child when she screamed at the sight of a vampire in a cemetery. They took her out of her foster home and brought her to live at the IPCA center, where she’s home-schooled when she’s not on assignment identifying and tagging vamps, weres, hags, and other supernaturals. Other than her ability to see through glamors, Evie’s just a normal human teenager. Wrong! As the story unfolds, Evie learns that she’s pretty far from normal, in more ways than one. She also learns what it means to be happy, and to be loved, in ways she never expected.
Evie is very much a 16-year-old girl. I love that in a book about what’s normal and not normal, Evie’s more of a normal teenager than a lot of the fully human teens in other YA paranormal novels. She likes to shop and watch television and has a crush on a famous actor. She wants to meet a cute boy who will like her back, and she wants to go to prom. She’s goofy and flirty and at times very insecure, and it makes her easily likeable. Lend is clearly paranormal from the first time we meet him, yet he’s also a very normal teenage boy. I found both characters refreshing in a genre that often expects teenagers to save the world. Now, that’s not to say that Lend and Evie don’t save the world. To find that out, you’ll have to read the book. :)
The story starts out on the more lighthearted side, and it’s told from Evie’s perspective so it’s a little fun and goofy, like she is. As the plot unfolds, the book takes a more serious turn but Evie’s voice is constant. I really enjoy White’s writing style, and I love that she keeps the fun in the story. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to have a little fun, whether young adult or young-at-heart. If you enjoy White’s writing as much as I do, you’ll be happy to know that Paranormalcy is the first book in a trilogy, with the second book, Supernaturally, coming out in Autumn 2011.
Lenah Beaudonte is a 592 year old vampire whose greatest wish is to become human again. Rhode, her lover and maker, sacrifices himself to allow her to regain her humanity. Alone and in her 16-year-old body, Lenah begins to discover the human world again. At first she feels like an outsider, but then she meets Justin…
I love that Infinite Days offers a fresh take on vampires. It seems like most modern writers are romanticizing them as heroes, but Maizel shows them in a different light. Her vampires are inherently evil, and must overcome that evil to be capable of rational thought and compassionate action. Most of Maizel’s vampires aren’t capable of that, but a select few are, and those are the characters that make this story great. Lenah, the main character and narrator of the book, was one of the most evil, but a selfless act by her soul mate Rhode gave her a second chance at life. Rhode offered his life to make Lenah human again. As he tells her before he dies, it is the intention that matters.
I really liked meeting Lenah and watching her transformation in the book. The story is told with a number of flashback-style memories, so I got to know not just who she is in the present time of the book, but also who she was in the previous 592 years. The flashbacks did pull me out of the present-day story a little bit, but I really liked getting to know the person that Lenah is becoming before knowing too much about who she had been as a vampire. Maizel’s description of the way Lenah rediscovers her humanity is what made this book for me. She describes the things that Lenah sees and feels so vividly that I could really imagine what it would be like to have those experiences for the very first time, and it made me love the story and the character all the more.
Rhode is such a romantic character, and I found him absolutely fascinating. He was able to overcome his vampiric evil, and he loved Lenah so much that he was willing to die so that she could truly live. Lenah thinks about Rhode often, so he appears in quite a few flashbacks, and in many ways he’s the primary love interest in the book. From the sneak peak in the back of the book, it looks like we’ll be learning more about Rhode in the sequel, Stolen Nights, and I’m really looking forward to it.
There are humans in the story too, of course, though I didn’t find them nearly as fascinating as the vampires. Tony is the first human to talk to Lenah and they quickly become friends. He’s a character that’s easy to like. He’s quirky, artsy, and very down to earth, so I was drawn to him quickly, though it was clear from the beginning that he was the friend and not the love interest. Justin I adored, but I didn’t feel like his character was as consistent as Tony. He seems to vacillate between being immature and superficial in some scenes to being very mature in others, and there were times when I downright disliked him. He’s a teenage boy, through and through, and Maizel does a great job of capturing that.
Nothing about this story feels contrived, and each scene flows smoothly off the previous one, leading to the confrontation that is clearly coming from the beginning of the book. The ending is beautiful and wonderful, and left me wanting more. I’ve always felt that the best fantasy/sci-fi/paranormal is about, at its heart, what it means to be human. Infinite Days fits this perfectly.
I’m loving the look of the new Tron movie, Tron Legacy. The new film builds on the original and tells the story of Kevin Flynn’s son, who goes in search of his father 20 years after his disappearance. Here’s the official synopsis from Walt Disney Pictures via IMDB:
Sam Flynn (Hedlund), a rebellious 27-year-old, is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of his father Kevin Flynn (Bridges), a man once known as the world’s leading video-game developer. When Sam investigates a strange signal sent from the old Flynn’s Arcade — a signal that could only come from his father– he finds himself pulled into a digital world where Kevin has been trapped for 20 years. With the help of the fearless warrior Quorra (Wilde), father and son embark on a life-or-death journey across a cyber universe — a universe created by Kevin himself that has become far more advanced with vehicles, weapons, landscapes and a ruthless villain who will stop at nothing to prevent their escape.
Tron Legacy is being released in 3D, and with as amazing as the graphics look in 2D, I can’t wait to see them in 3D IMAX. I’ve attached another video below that really showcases the CGI.
The last time I saw the original Tron I was really young (I was 6 when it came out in theaters!), so I’m really hoping to be able to watch it again before Tron Legacy hits theaters in December. I’ve looked quite a bit online, and it seems that only the 20th anniversary collector’s edition is available for purchase, for $35.95. I’d been hoping to find it available streaming from Amazon (because I want it NOW!), but no luck. However, as it’s Walt Disney Pictures, I’m thinking we may see a new release of the original in the coming months as a lead in for the new film.
January 2, 2011, at 7:56 am
