Another short post. It's been a very stressful, busy week. I've written well over 20,000 words, edited and proofread about 125,000 words, and turned in a couple of assignments so as to remain coherent and on top of things academically. That is a recipe for, oh, about 3-5 hours of sleep per night. And I've consumed far too much alcohol. That was restricted to last night. Hangovers are not fun. I only got to sleep at 8 a.m. and woke at 1 p.m. *sighs*

On a brighter note, I just finished reading Richelle Mead's Frostbite and it was fantastic. Better than Vampire Academy and with a closing scene that had me nearly screeching with excitement because now I want the next book! Like, now.

I'll put a review up soon...

Alice has turned me into a rabbit too. Oh, yes. I kid you not. All those meals packed full of ghastly amounts of peas and literal piles of steamed broccoli? Do you know what they've done to me? Well, I'm going to tell you what they've done to me. Today I went to the Spar (the store) to stock up on food because I'd run out. Did I buy my usual Sangu-ish stuff i.e. ham, chicken, cheese, cereal, etc?

No, I did not.

I got the cereal, yes. But what else, you might wonder?

Broccoli.

And apples. But brocco-freaking-lee?

I'm going to go cry in my bed now.




Oh, and P.S.    The day I buy peas of my own accord, I am going to put a missile into Alice's uterus trench.


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Alcohol is quite the brain-killer. I've just had a very enjoyable night, though. Went to a campus bar. I also managed to write a whole chapter today, which means I have eight chapters of NDW left to write ('eight' is as far as my loose plotline predicts at the moment... it could change). Seeing as my self-imposed deadline is Sid's birthday (my brother; 30th of April), I think I can make it. Hooray for me!

I think I might want to go to bed now. But I know I won't fall asleep. Bloody insomnia.


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Insomnia is a bloody nuisance, if you ask me. Okay, so it's 1.00 a.m. - not an unreasonable hour, by any standards, but I already sense I won't be falling asleep before 3 or 4 a.m at the earliest. And this might have been a tolerable state of affairs over the holidays, but I really need to get my sleep cycle in order now if I want to be awake and alert for my nine o' clock lecture on Monday. No more slacking off when there are exams to be thinking of. I can't miss these lectures. I have no idea how to write exam essays, I need to go to these to find out! Panic. Panic.

As Thwain Ramston would say, bleeding saints. I want to go to bed. And not lie awake for hours.

Damn shame none of my new books have arrived. There are only so many rereads of The Time Traveler's Wife I can manage in a small space of time, much as I love the book.

On a brighter note, I'm actually quite happy tonight because I am now in possession of a green tortoise (a stuffed toy, not a real one) from Ireland. I've named him Tommy Tee. He looks like a 'Tommy Tee'. The Dublin lot brought him back for me. I love him.

I'm also fairly kicked because earlier tonight, during our usual post-dinner chat, I got to discuss my one-time ambition to be a stunt motorcyclist. I had nearly forgotten about it, which is startling because it was so important to me at one point, and it was nice to remember the good ol' days before shit happened. Oh, yes. I had a phase where my dearest ambition was to jump the Grand Canyon like Robbie Knievel. On a motorbike. Sadly, I fear such a risky endeavour would demolish me before I managed to finish the Whiteshire series... and where would the world be then?

In the spirit of the Whiteshire series, I've decided to paste in an excerpt from about halfway through NDW. It won't make an ounce of sense, but I'll feel productive and I think it captures the essence of Whiteshire, the city, well.

Though I wanted desperately to get to the city and free Laila, with each passing hour, I became more aware of what awaited me and more afraid of it. Horrible possibilities occurred to me. Tortures. Pain. All the dark, terrible stories my mother had told me to keep me in line, all the monsters of a child’s nightmares. Oh, they were real in Whiteshire. And I was about to offer myself to them.

For one instant, one awful minute, I wanted to run again. I was seventeen. I wasn’t very much more than a child. Was this fair? Was this fair at all, that I should have to die, that a death- and power-obsessed Council ought to have the right to murder a seventeen-year-old boy?

It wasn’t fair.

It was what he’d tried making me understand all my life, with those lessons, with those long conversations on weekend afternoons. He’d tried making me see that it wasn’t fair at all… that it was worth fighting to change it.

“Oh, Uncle Will.”

I’d understood too late and even now I wondered if it was worth death. Wasn’t a slice of normal life better than dying for dreams?

***

In spite of the fear that had turned my skin cold with sweat, there was room enough in me for a flood of emotion when I opened my eyes and saw Whiteshire again. A part of me hated it, this city of broken promises and empty dreams and endless, endless loss, but I loved it as well and I could not escape that. Deep as a mother’s bond to her child before birth, so I was bound to Whiteshire. I could never have shaken off this place.

The grey, bleak skies cast a pall over the city, turning marble and stone and brick into shimmering silvery statues, and the silence crept up. No laughter ringing out in the streets. Oh, it was no doubt there, somewhere, but there was none of the crowd’s enthusiasm and joy as I had seen so often in Industan. None of the bustle. This was a city quiet with fear. This was a city waiting for death, always waiting for the next death. And yet, even in its austere bleakness, the fields and hills were green, and rain dripped from the leaves of Hoodwood Forest, which sang in the wind to me. The Forest had not changed. It was still as lovely and as eternal as rock. And as I watched the clouds shift over the core of the Terren Empire, I reflected that there was beauty in Whiteshire’s imperfections, beauty in the destruction and the flaws. Because nothing, however broken, was ever truly beyond hope.

Another lesson Uncle Will had taught me, another lesson I had learned too late. But I had learned it.

“One day,” I whispered to the twilit city, “Someone will save you. It just won't be me.”         

                                                                                           ***

Comments?

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DEMON MOON

Meljean Brook's Demon Moon is without doubt one of the most intriguing and surprising novels I have ever read. I'll be honest- I started it out with the preconceived notion that, as an erotic paranormal romance and urban fantasy, it would be vaguely Mills-and-Boon-ish... with a plot. I was not expecting it to be so, so much more and I'm very happy to say that I will no longer judge books by their covers! (Because let's face it: this book's cover is rather misleading) - I'm going to try and keep the spoilers to a minimum in this review, but be warned that a few details (not vital plot twists, of course!) may escape.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Guardian series (Demon Moon comes fourth), as I was before reading this, it might be a good idea to look at the author's Primer on her official site, because there's no way I would be able to explain all the background here. Suffice it to say that Brook's world is populated by all manner of beings from Heaven, Hell, Chaos and Caelum.

The novel pits unnaturally beautiful vampire Colin Ames-Beaumont (and never forget the hyphen: it was "paid dearly" for!) against curious genius Savitri Murray as they struggle not to fall in love with one another. In the aftermath of a nosferatu attack, Savi finds that she is bonded to Colin through a mixture of hellhound venom and nosferatu blood. The two face their own demons - Colin cannot look into a mirror without seeing Chaos and Savi is haunted by the memory of the brutal murder of her family - and it's in struggling to help one another overcome these that they inevitably fall in love. It happens fluidly, naturally, and as a reader, put in the shoes of both, I felt the same way they did and had to ask myself: how can they not love one another?

Of course, it's never going to be easy. The link between bloodlust and sex makes it virtually impossible for Colin to be monogamous with a human like Savi, and their constant struggle is the focal point of the novel.

As far as the pace goes, the opening chapters are fantastic, followed by a bit of a slump where the reader is given information through Savi's incessant questions. This is important information, but I couldn't help wondering if it could have been scattered more evenly through the novel so as to avoid the slow patch. To a patient reader, however, it's well worth your while to get through these bits, because after the first ten chapters or so, the pace begins to rocket and it is undeniably gripping. The author manages, incredibly, to make her readers breathless with scintillating erotic descriptions and equally breathless with bone-chilling sequences of attack and terror.

I found the latter particularly effective because these sequences were grounded in the fear either Colin or Savi feels for the other, which gives the action an intensely personal note. You care about what happens to these characters, and about the myriad other fascinating and lovable denizens of the world. Take Lilith, Hugh and Sir Pup as examples.

Being Indian, I was skeptical at first about Savi's half-Indian background, but I loved the way this was brought out. Savi remains modern yet culturally grounded and Brook's attention to detail is fantastic. At no point did this seem unconvincing.

On a negative note, apart from the slow pace of the early chapters, there are a number of twists towards the climax of the novel that tended to leave me a little irked. I couldn't help thinking that there was already so much keeping these two apart: why in the world did there have to be more thrown in to complicate it? I suspect other people might feel the same way, but it must be said that these chapters are nevertheless effective because in the end, these twists are vital to the plot and successful conclusion of the story. You discover (spoiler here!) that what actually appears to be an even greater obstacle is in reality the thing that saves them.

There were bits in this book that made me laugh out loud (Nani, for example, provided me with a great deal of amusement, reminding me as she did of my own grandmother) and other bits that made me unashamedly teary. Perhaps the most moving moment, to me, was a passage where Colin's existence as a vampire is truly brought home to Savi... and to the reader. He cannot be filmed or photographed and he does not have a reflection. Perhaps most painfully of all, when he feeds from a human, his blood (used to heal their wound) makes them forget him instantly after.

    "Do you appear on any display? Film, digital cameras, video?"
    "No," he said softly.
    Two hundred years, with nothing to confirm his existence but the gaze of others, his determination not to lose himself. Look at me. How many times had he asked her---begged her---to do that in Caelum? But she hadn't... couldn't.
---Demon Moon, page 145

This is without doubt a flawed book, but it is undoubtedly wonderful reading, a testament to why thousands of readers still love a good, passionate romance and why as many of us still love the wild, surreal imagination of fantasy.

And needless to say, I will be naming my very next dog Sir Pup.


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With several of my friends off in Dublin, I have spent the weekend quite fruitfully, surprisingly enough. I've also spent an absurd amount of money in the past few days. Gut-wrenchingly painful, even. I've bought clothes (some very nice ones, so I'm thrilled), a completely awesome pair of brown boots, and three books off Amazon that I'm waiting for: Richelle Mead's "Frostbite" (second in the Vampire Academy series), Stephenie Meyer's "Eclipse" (third in the Twilight series), and Neil Gaiman's "Stardust". I'm very excited. I'm also intrigued that most of the books on my shelf appear to be some form of fantasy or the other, even down to Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories", which is a textbook for the year!

You'd imagine that I'd be over the moon, having gotten myself so much new loot. But most of it still has to arrive... and until I have all my glorious new possessions in my room, I'm going to be in the pit of depression, feeling financially strapped. Gah.

On another note, I recently bought and read Meljean Brook's "Demon Moon" (part of her Guardian series), which was quite stunningly fantastic. I daresay a lot of people unfairly judge and look down on erotic paranormal romance, but this book was just awesome. A review will be up soon, if anyone's interested!

Finally, I thought I'd respond at last to the anonymous person who asked me about The Book (sorry I've taken so long). It ought to go on here anyway, along with an explanation of the name of my journal. I'm finding it hard to classify The Book (which is tentatively called "No Dreams in Whiteshire" at the moment) into a specific genre: it's not wholly fantasy, not wholly historical, and not wholly young adult. I suppose it's a mixture of all three.

NDW is set in an alternate version of 1901, in a fictional empire called Terrenor, where a tyrannical Council and its Lady, Isabel, rule. The novel is narrated by Jake Quin, a boy who just wants, more than anything else, to have a normal life and to not have to be afraid anymore.

This becomes increasingly difficult for him, however, when disaster and tragedy strike his family. He finds himself forced to bear the burden of a terrifying secret and to deliver a message to rebels in the empire. The novel moves across huge distances, including skewed 'fantasy' versions of England, India and Scotland. It follows Jake as he makes choices, falls in love, is marked for death, and struggles, in the midst of a growing war, to find just "one trace of ordinariness".

Trust me, it's better than it sounds. I hope. :)

As for my LJ title, well, two of the characters in NDW are named William Cross and Laila Cross (father and daughter). They're phenomenally central to the plot and Jake, my narrator and hero, is, at one point in the book called "twice cross'd" simply because the two Crosses have such a huge impact on his life. They've had an amazing impact on my life, too, hence my title.


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So during my weekend in London, we got round to talking about the highly morbid subject of funerals and how we'd like our own to be. It sounds very weird, but it's actually an amusing thing to discuss and it also sort of strips away the taboo of Oh-My-God-I'm-So-Afraid-To-Think-of-Being-Dead-AAAAH! So, without further ado, here are the things (let it go on record, please, so that when I do finally kick the bucket, in many many years, people are prepared) I would like at my funeral:


1. All female attendees must wear cocktail dresses. The brighter, the better. None of this black/white malarky.

2. All male attendees must wear cocktail dresses, too. The brighter and strappier, the manlier the man is. Of course, if someone really really can't bear to be seen cross-dressing, then I expect posh-looking suits. The kind that makes every man look hot. I'm still swaying towards the cocktail dresses, though.

3. There must be compulsory weeping into hankies. At least 10 minutes of it consecutively.

4. At least one of my friends must pull/get off with/make out with someone at my funeral. My brother, however, is off-limits. No. Ew.

5. The funeral soundtrack must be my Winamp playlist. Amina insists its funereal anyway.

6. "Carnival of Rust" and "Dragostea Din Tei (English Version)" must play at least three times each, and during the latter, people must do the tango. Oh, yes. Take lessons if you have to beforehand. Grandparents and other elderly folk can waltz instead, children can jump up and down if they want, and wheelchair-bound attendees must swivel.

7. A montage of exceedingly flattering photographs of me must play on a screen at the back of the room. Preferably set to some kind of tear-jerkingly sentimental ballad. (This would be a good time for the compulsory weeping).

8. Every single attendee has to go up on a stage and say one nice thing about me. And no, "her brother is worse" does not count.


I think that just about covers it. Any suggestions?


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So here I am, after an exhausting day in London! I got no sleep last night. I was able to discover that my friends snore/smack me in their sleep/toss and turn a lot. Also, I was able to take note when the church outside Katy's house chimed 2, 3, 4, 5 and freaking 6! Gee whiz. I was almost dead but I managed to wander around London, and we saw most of the sights: Big Ben, Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square, the Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral... wow. We managed to get an absurdly amazing amount done in four hours! And we got photographs in phone booths... very touristy... a la Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)

Now I'm in Coggeshall, where Alice lives, and it is without doubt the most picturesque little English village. I love Lancaster, but as a village, this one is just as beautiful in that old-storybook sort of way. It's astonishing.

You'd think, too, that I'd be off to bed. Oh, no. I'm half-drunk, half-dressed and on my out to a wild night in Colchester!

Ah, the life of a university student/amateur writer. Who can beat it?


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So, I'm off to London today. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, because I get to see my-best-friend-at-university Alice again. I've missed her! We're going to spend the weekend in London and near it, where she lives. It's bound to be awesome. My other best friends here, Sam and Katy, will also be there, so hooray! A girly weekend away is just what I need. Odd, to think that this is the first weekend in six months that I'll be spending away from Lancaster.

More when I get back!



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My very first post as a blogger. I read blogs. I enjoy them. My favourite one right now is probably urban fantasy author Richelle Mead's blog (blue_succubus). It keeps me hooked. Her books are awesome too, anyone ever read any?

I've never actually managed to write a blog before, though. I have enough stress in my life without adding the trauma of a blog. Facebook was enough for me. Why now? I have whims. I do things. Thus... this.

I'm not very fond of my blog theme in general. I'd like it to be cooler, more personal. Any ideas? Actually, does anyone know how this can be done?

I also procrastinated shamelessly before typing this up. I had bad case of pre-post stage fright. Shame on me, really. I'm a writer! Or at least, I want to be. Correction: I intend to be. As soon as I can finish The Book. Rejections are painful, FYI. I've had loads. Tons of them in the past year. But I'll brave the elements. Hence the "struggling" part. And I'm on a university student's budget with exams looming in a couple of months. Hence the "starving" part.

Well, we'll see. I suppose this blog will keep track of all of that: juggling writing, life, pitching, rejections, proposals... and just general rubbish and gibberish. How fun.


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